


Osiris

by Tiptoe991



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29996193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiptoe991/pseuds/Tiptoe991
Summary: The crew of the Normandy SR-2 have returned safely from the Omega 4 Relay, but the announcement of Shepard's survival brings out enemies both old and new. Can Shepard survive the immediate danger while the greater threat remains elusive.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Female Shepard/Liara T'Soni
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	1. The Hunted

**Author's Note:**

> Resurrecting a story I started almost ten years ago after the release of ME2. I hope it still stands the test of time.  
> Please review if you can, all constructive criticism is appreciated.

**Chapter 1: The Hunted**

“Thanks again Doc, I’ll be sure to send Garrus by before we leave again.”

“That is very kind, Shepard, but I know Garrus must be a busy man, I would hate to be a nuisance.”

“Don’t worry Doc, we’re on shore leave, I’m sure he’ll be able to spare the time after he takes care of a few things.”

 _His hangover for starters,_ Shepard thought to herself as he left the medical clinic and headed towards the Citadel Zakera markets. She couldn’t help but smile as she thought back to that morning, waking up snuggled up to the heat sink of a thanix cannon with what appeared to be a broken rib and a large collection of empty bottles feeling somewhere between half-dead and all-dead. Last night had been the first time the Normandy crew had had the chance to relax since their return from the Omega 4 Relay almost two months ago. And holy hell had they used it well. After the lockdown had been lifted, the Normandy had become a nightclub, the military discipline had been thrown out the airlock and the alcohol had been unleashed. Every member of the crew had embarrassed themselves or created something of a story. A few highlights of which included Shepard and Garrus being recorded singing (if the definition could stretch that far) at the top of their lungs from the galaxy map platform, Miranda’s table dancing in the mess hall, Joker confessing his undying love to EDI and the two engine techs being discovered soixante neuf’d in the AI Core room. 

Shepard’s memory went hazy shortly after she had joined in a drinking competition between Wrex and Grunt. _Note to self,_ she thought to herself, _Never try to outdrink a half tonne Krogan with 2 livers and a few centuries of drinking experience._ The first thing she remembered seeing upon waking up in the forward battery was Garrus slumped against the other cannon. Realising that there wouldn’t be a single soul on the ship in any capable condition to give Shepard’s broken rib medical attention, she had decided to visit Dr. Michel in the Zakera Wards, a broken rib could be healed in seconds with the right equipment and aside from the headache still splitting her skull Shepard felt reasonably fit for duty.

“Feeling OK?” asked Tali from the doorway.

“Define “OK”” replied Shepard as she shielded her still hung-over eyes against the fierce light of the upper wards. This seemed to amuse Tali somewhat as she shook her head and laughed. Tali’s enviro-suit prevented her from drinking alcohol; she had been limited to a phsychoactive aerosol that she introduced into her airflow system, it had a similar effect on her to the alcohol that the crew were drinking, but didn’t give her the horrendous after-effects that Shepard was now suffering.

“Yeah, yeah, keep laughing ... right up until I slip some vodka into your hydration filter.”

“Very funny, of course it would kill me.”

“Well, whatever the dextro-protein version of vodka is, you’re getting it.”

Tali laughed. “What now, back to the Normandy?”

“Actually, I wanna have a look around the markets, I’ll see you back there.”

“I’ll come with you, I’ve never seen the new markets.”

With that the two women headed off into the rebuilt upper wards. Two years ago this section of the wards had been a rather plain place, with only the clinic, the two clubs and a small market between them. However, almost the entire area had been destroyed during the battle of the Citadel, which presented the ideal opportunity to transform the area into one of the most extensive markets on the Citadel. The markets stretched across two tiers, one overlooking the other, and contained dozens of shops. Shepard was excited to browse the shops without having to focus entirely on weapons upgrades for a change; she felt as if it had been years since her last shore leave (and she supposed it had been if she included the two years of being dead.) As she passed the first of the stalls, she noticed Thane standing with his son, inspecting some of the clothing stalls. She caught his eye and gave a curt nod which he mirrored before returning to his conversation, she smiled as she turned her attention back the wares of the stalls.

She spent the next few minutes talking with Tali as they wandered through the market, exchanging stories from the previous night of various hilarities and considering various items that she thought could personalise her quarters a little. For the first time since she had first laid eyes on the Normandy, Shepard was starting to feel normal again, like a civilian (not that she had much understanding of such an existence). She felt the weight of the universe slowly lifting from her shoulders and simply enjoyed the company of her friend and the soothing effect of their retail therapy. That was, however, until she heard Thane in her communications implant.

“Shepard, do not look back, do not physically react to my voice.” Thane had his level, no nonsense, operational tone of voice on, and it made Shepard nervous. She gave Tali a subtle glance, to which Tali in turn gave a slight nod, she could hear him too as he spoke again.

“You have picked up a shadow.”

Somebody was following her?! How did she not spot them?

“Since when?” Tali asked.

“I am unsure, I noticed him after you passed me.”

“Reporter?” Shepard spoke quietly even in the loud, crowded market. She found it incredibly difficult to resist the urge to rest her hand on the pistol on her hip. It was an instinctual reaction, drilled into her over a decade of combat, the feel of it would give her a sense of security, but she couldn’t risk starting a panic in the middle of a crowded street over a nosey reporter or worse, some kid looking for an autograph.

“Negative. He’s using crowds to move through exposed areas, avoiding doorways, keeping his head down.”

“And for those of us who don’t speak assassin ...”

“They are avoiding the cameras ... they are well trained in counter surveillance techniques.”

This made Shepard even more nervous. She ran through the possible explanations in her head; _the Council?_ No. They had re-instated her Spectre status, which they would not have done if they had any suspicions about her in case of a scandal. _C-Sec?_ Unlikely, this wasn’t their style. C-Sec operated by the book, no exceptions, they would use the surveillance cameras to track her. She considered a number of options and dismissed each just as quickly. There were only a select few who had a reason and the resources to have a trained espionage agent following her in the middle of the citadel, and the list of candidates did nothing to calm her nerves.

“Can you get a description?”

“Negative. Turian ... male judging by the size. Blue clothing, black hood.”

“Armed?”

“... Unknown.”

Shepard took a deep breath and steadied herself, the citadel markets were a ridiculous location for any assassination attempt, there were too many people, cameras, witnesses and C-Sec personnel. However, Shepard couldn’t deny her instincts; a mysterious, hooded and well-trained surveillance operative following her less than a week after the official announcement by the citadel that Shepard was, indeed, alive ... it didn’t feel good to her.

 _Time to get a look at this bastard,_ she thought.

“Distance?”

“Ten metres behind, five to your left, keeping pace.”

Shepard tried to act casual as she pulled Tali over to stall selling a number of strange metallic ornaments. Tali put on a good show of talking with the owner about price as Shepard lifted one dark polished item up, seemingly examining it while Tali haggled the price. The reflection on the surface of the object was warped, but Shepard caught a glimpse of the figure by the railing. Her eyes almost passed over him the first time she looked, his pose against the rail was so casual that he blended into the crowd, seemingly gazing out into space through the glass wall that ran the length of the market. But there he was, blue clothing, with a black hood over his head. 

_Shit,_ she thought, he must have turned when he saw them stop, he was facing away from her, she couldn’t see his face.

Shepard lowered the ornament and gently declined the owner’s bargaining and continued with Tali down the street. They were halfway through the markets, approaching the old section that had remained unaffected in the battle against Sovereign. It was more crowded here, and Shepard found herself getting more intimidated in the press of the crowds.

“Thane, does he have friends?” She waited tensely for a few seconds before his response.

“Negative.”

“Can you get close to him?”

“He’s being too careful, he will see me if I approach.”

 _Damn,_ she thought, _we need to catch him._

“Tali and I can take him.”

“Negative, there are too many routes of escape in this area, he will run and it’s too crowded, I cannot provide cover if it becomes confrontational.”

“We are running out of time and options, Thane.” Tali hissed, it was the first time she had spoken in a long while. She sounded nervous.

Shepard felt a bead of sweat trickle down her temple, they had reached the old markets and only had a minute or two before they ran out of the crowds that were giving Shepard her only source of cover. Her frustration mounting, she was considering reaching for her weapon when her comms crackled in her ear again.

“Shepard, its Wrex.” She didn’t think she had ever been more relieved to hear that deep, baritone voice before. “Lead that slippery little bastard to Chora’s Den, I’m already there. There’s only one way outta here, and Frog-boy can cover that, me and Tali can cover you in the bar.”

“What are you doing there, Wrex?” Tali sounded both confused and relieved.

“Just enjoying the view. You wanna get this done or chat about my vacation plans?”

She thought about it for a moment, Chora’s Den was a circular bar, easily covered by three people should the situation become hostile. Also, the usual clientele of the Den should discourage any violence, half the people in that bar would be armed and a single hitter trying to blow away a local hero like Shepard without back-up in there would be suicide. With Shepard at the bar as bait, Wrex and Tali could converge on the stalker while Thane prevented him from fleeing. Shepard felt the wind changing to her advantage and couldn’t help the brief smile play across her lips.

“Let’s do it.” Shepard said, already feeling more secure. She turned down the stairs leading to the final section of the markets. “Thane, keep your distance, its less crowded down here don’t let him see you.”

“Acknowledged, Commander.”

It was pointless advice, of course. She was giving stealth tips to an elite assassin. She might as well be lecturing a krogan on headbutting technique. Still, she found that giving instructions always helped calm her nerves, making sure everyone was on the same page.

“Wrex, where are you sitting?”

“Table at 3 o’clock from the bar.”

“Ok, Thane, when we’re all inside take up position at the door and cover the exit.”

“Understood.”

Shepard didn’t dare risk a glance back as she turned the final corner towards Chora’s Den. She knew the shadow was close behind her, he would have had to close the distance in the tight corners of the lower markets to keep her in sight, Thane would be somewhere behind, blending seamlessly into the crowds.

“Tali,” Shepard put on her most convincing smile as she turned her head to speak, not wishing to be obviously on edge “You move over and cover the left side of the bar from 10 o’clock.”

“Got it, Shepard.”

The door to Chora’s Den hissed open in front of them, Shepard steeled herself and stepped into the neon-lit bar and was instantly hit with a wall of bass-heavy music. She lingered for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the dark neon glow before walking directly towards the bar. Tali gave her a brief nod before heading over to a table on Shepard’s left and a brief glance to her right revealed Wrex tipping a dancer as she crawled off the table at which he was sitting. Shepard couldn’t help but smile as she wondered just how long he had been “Enjoying the view” before they had arrived, but now he had his game face on, and she could see the outline of his enormous Eviscerator shotgun on his lap below the table.

“Better stick to the pistol Wrex, don’t want any collateral today.”

He turned his head to lock eyes with her for a moment before subtly shifting the shotgun off his lap and propping it against the leg of his chair.

“Kill-joy.”

“Shepard,” It was Thane again. “target moving to Chora’s Den, I will move in when you confirm he is inside.”

It was a tense few moments as Shepard waited for someone to speak, she had her back to the door and would have to rely on Tali and Wrex to be the eyes in the back of her head. She simply nodded absently when the barman asked her if she wanted a drink, and as he began to pour some vile smelling blue liquid she risked another glance at Wrex.

* * *

Wrex was sat comfortably in the same seat he had been occupying for the past hour, with his fourth drink of the morning in his hand. He put on a casual appearance, but inside he was tense and battle-ready. He leaned back in his chair enough to appear to be lounging lazily, but kept his feet wide and bent under his chair, keeping them directly below his centre of gravity so that he would be perfectly balanced should he need to spring up. His right hand held his drink on the table while his left held the pistol at his hip.

His eyes left Shepard’s as he saw the door behind her slide open, revealing the black hooded turian standing in the doorway. The low lighting of Chora’s Den meant that even facing him, he couldn’t make out a face.

 _Game time,_ he thought as he tried to relax his muscles again.

* * *

Shepard’s comms crackled again.

“Target at the door, scouting the bar.”

She took a deep breath and, as casually as she could manage, leant forward against the bar. A chill ran up her spine before her comms activated again.

“He’s seen you, he’s taken a seat at the table at your 5 o’clock.” Tali this time. “Wrex, can you see his face? It’s too dark!”

“Nah, and stop starin’, will ya? You’ll spook him.” Wrex sounded a little too damn relaxed for Shepard’s liking. “Frog boy, get in-“

“Shepard,” Thane’s voice cut over Wrex’s “six men approaching Chora’s Den. Mercenaries, no uniforms, heavily armed.”

 _Shit, shit, SHIT,_ thought Shepard. No assassin would attack her here alone, but with six men for backup Shepard suddenly felt like a fish in a barrel.

“Move in behind them. Wrex, Tali, hold your positions.”

The next few moments were some of the longest Shepard could remember. She was used to gun battles and ambushes, everything happening in an instant and having to react in a second, that was fine.

 _Hell,_ she thought, _that’s sometimes fun._

This, however, was torture. The tension was playing havoc with her nerves; the waiting, the anticipation, the fear. In a reactionary situation Shepard never had time for fear, it was fight or flight, but this sneaking around, being followed, being _hunted_ was shredding her mind. She was stuck with her back to her enemy, in a crowded bar with only a personal KBar (Kinetic Barrier) unit, the incredibly lightly armoured Cerberus utility outfit and a pistol.

“Okay,” Wrex said. “four hostiles entering the bar, shotguns and pistols.”

“Shepard,” Thane again “they have posted two men outside the door, I cannot get past them without violence.”

 _Fuck,_ she thought, this was going very wrong very quickly.

“Standby, Thane.”

Tali’s voice came through again. “They are splitting up, two left, two right. Looks like they are positioning themselves.”

“Get ready to rumble, people.” Said Wrex. “Wait, Shepard the primary target is up, he’s walking for you, 5 meters.”

Shepard carefully placed her drink on the bar and cracked her knuckles.

“Four.”

Shepard drew in a breath and held it. She slowly trailed her hand down to her waist, taking her weight off her elbow on the bar and shifting it to the balls of her feet.

“Three meters.”

Shepard wheeled around on the spot, knocking the salarian to her left across the floor, drawing her pistol as she did so. She had a very short space of time to capitalise on her advantage of surprise, she had to take down the primary and at least one other before they drew their own weapons if herself, Wrex and Tali had any chance of taking all 5 down before they got a shot off. As she turned, time seemed to slow to a crawl as the adrenaline shot through her veins: she felt the mechanical clunking in her hand as the barrel of her pistol extended and even above the noise of the bar, she could hear the slight hum as the power cell of the gun came online. After what seemed like an age, she completed her turn and raised her pistol, aiming at the black space below the dark hood in front of her just as the target lifted his head, letting the light hit his face for the first time and Shepard’s green eyes were met by the glowing blue Turian orbs that stopped her dead in her tracks.

She couldn’t move, all sound around her melted into silence as she stared into his face. _How could it be him?_ She though, _It’s impossible_. Time stood still as she stared bewildered into his eyes, her finger resting motionless on the trigger of her weapon. She was absently aware of the other mercenaries drawing their own weapons in her peripheral vision as Wrex’s voice thundered in her ear, but he sounded so far away, his voice lost behind those shining blue eyes. It was with a strange detachment that she finally drew her eyes away from his when she noticed the shotgun in his hands pointing straight at her chest, she glanced down at it for only a moment before she locked eyes with him again.

Saren’s eyes never left hers as he raised the weapon to her chest and fired. Shepard heard the explosion of noise blast through the silence her mind had thrown around her, she saw her shields flicker and shatter as they hopelessly tried to block the immense power of the shot. It didn’t really hurt when she felt the impact, she simply felt a dull thump in her chest before she was thrown backwards over the bar, and her world went black.


	2. The Hit

Urdnot Wrex was over seven hundred years old, if anyone asked exactly how old, he wouldn’t tell them for two reasons: firstly it was none of their fucking business, and secondly he had stopped caring or counting a long time ago. After watching countless people die, he had realised that it really doesn’t matter how long a life is, all that really mattered is how much booze, sex and decent fights you got in before some lucky bastard got the best of you, and those happened to be the only three things that he had cared about for centuries. The great thing about them is that you couldn’t really take them away. Sure, they could smash a bottle of liquor (he’d shoot them for it, but it was an option) but he could always acquire more of it, always find some other piece of tail and there was ALWAYS somebody worth killing. Friends, family, possessions, a home, everything else were weaknesses.

Wrex had severed ties with his family a long time ago, well in point of fact he had killed most of them, but with the surviving members he had done the more universal tradition of simply leaving and never talking to them again. Family was the easiest weakness to use against those who cared about their own, he knew this because he had used it against his own enemies. When he was still young Wrex had run with a number of crews, staying with the same group for years before learning the error of his ways. He had nearly died when things eventually went bad, he had been stupid trying to save his team instead of doing the smart thing and getting out and leaving them to die. The only reason he made it out of that hellhole is because he was damn good at killing people, it was his gift.

He had always been good at killing, which in part came with being a krogan given that his entire anatomy had evolved primarily to survive and kill the Tuchankan wildlife ... and there wasn’t a single thing on Tuchanka that flew, swam or shit in the dirt that couldn’t kill a krogan. However, Wrex had always had a special talent for it which had been a huge advantage when he was still living in his first tribe. Being the chief’s son had meant that he was expected to be the strongest. It also meant that every other youngster for a thousand miles had wanted to kill him to prove their strength. This in turn had given him the opportunity to sharpen his killing skills to perfection, by the time he left his home world there were few that could even make him break a sweat. So he used these skills to kill for anyone with the credit to pay him. He worked alone, or in a small group for a short time before moving on to the next job, he didn’t let himself get tied down to anyone or anything for longer than was necessary to complete the job ... and if the situation called for it, he would kill ANYONE if it was in any way advantageous to him. 

All that had changed, however, when he had teamed up with Shepard. Their mission to hunt down Saren Arterius had taken months, and Shepard had collected a team that together made one of the most efficient killing machines Wrex had ever encountered. Being locked in a tin can with these people had left little else to do but talk, you could only clean a weapon so many times before boredom forced conversation. Shepard and her team had proved to be some of the best warriors he’d ever worked with (hell, he had been on that ship for nearly six months and he hadn’t even shot the turian). Shepard’s mission was different, he had found himself fighting not only for credits, but for a cause. Wrex hadn’t cared about a cause in centuries, but he suddenly found himself fighting with the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders, he was fighting with a purpose beyond a few bucks, with a team that meant more to him than tools to be used and disposed of. To his surprise it kept him sharp, hell it sharpened him up even more. Shepard and her crew were the only group of beings that Wrex could tolerate for more than a few minutes at a time, which was why the current situation pissed him off a little more than usual.

He had been sat at a table in Chora’s Den, which was his favourite place on the Citadel for three very good reasons: cheap booze, half naked women and people who left him alone, with a gorgeous asari dancer writhing around on the table in front of him. His morning had started out fair enough, he had left the Normandy in the early hours and had swiftly been picked up by C-Sec. After an hour being given the “Don’t kill anybody” speech, Wrex hit the Den. After the battle of the Citadel and the death of Saren, Wrex had decided to try to make a difference with his species, and had returned to Tuchanka to unite the clans and rebuild the Krogan race. After that, he hadn’t gotten the chance to get off world for the next two years with the risk of the clans tearing apart the fragile peace he had managed to bully them into. It felt good to be back on the Citadel, he had missed the chaos of it all, the crowds, the noise and he had sure as hell missed the Den. Sure, Krogan females had the guts and strength to make sex nearly as stimulating as a good fight, but nothing could match the delicate beauty of the asari dancers that the Den hired. With the return of Shepard from the Omega 4 relay he had thought the occasion worthy enough to return to meet the reunited team and join in the shindig, it was only logical to visit the Den while he was here, he may not get another chance in a long time.

He had been in the Den for a good hour and was just polishing off his third drink when he had picked up the comm chatter between Shepard, Tali and Thane. Somebody was tailing Shepard through the markets and, according to Thane, was no sloppy amateur. Wrex didn’t know Thane personally, and from their limited association Wrex thought he was too much of a spiritual pussy for his liking, but if somebody earned any sort of reputation in the life that Wrex and Thane lived then they were good ... and Thane had a reputation as the best, so Wrex wasn’t inclined to second guess his tactical observations. Wrex didn’t like the situation, this mystery turian had the drop on Shepard with her pants down; they were poorly armed, had next to no armour, and no idea who they were dealing with. Over the next few minutes it became clear to Wrex that they weren’t gonna lose this turian in the markets and Shepard was getting nervous.

Shepard was a warrior like Wrex, and one of the best he had ever known, this wasn’t their style of warfare. Shepard, like Wrex, preferred a straight up fight: to meet on whatever battlefield, see who had the bigger stick and get to swinging it. All this cloak and dagger crap was difficult to control, one slippery turian against the four of them and the turian had all the advantages, it was only blind luck that they were even aware of his existence and the only advantage that Wrex could think of is that he hadn’t yet seemed to realise that he had been spotted. If they were gonna have to tackle this bastard, Wrex wanted to at least do it on home turf, bring him to familiar ground, eliminate the crowds he hides in and cut off his exit and they might just catch him.

“Shepard, it’s Wrex. Lead that slippery little bastard to Chora’s Den, I’m already there. There’s only one way outta here, and Frog-boy can cover that, me and Tali can cover you in the bar.”

He waited a moment for Shepard to think it over, it took a second or two longer than he expected, a clear sign to him that she was unnerved by the situation, before he heard his comms activate again.

“Let’s do it.”

 _This is gonna be fun,_ he thought. He summoned a waitress over, downed the remnants of his third drink and ordered himself another (a double measure this time). Occasionally discussing minor details of the plan with Shepard, he reached around behind him and pulled his Eviscerator shotgun away from the magnetic bar on his belt and rested it on his knee under the table before leaning back in his chair, taking up a casual pose. Wherever he was in the galaxy Wrex always sat facing the door, he liked to know who was entering and leaving the bar and preferred having his back to the wall. It was a precaution that some called excessive, and one salarian ex-STG agent had called “Paranoid and pathetic” which Wrex had found amusing the following day when he had entered a bar, walked up behind that same agent and blew a hole in the back of his head to prove his point. The barmaid arrived with his next drink and Wrex immediately took a healthy measure of it, taking half of its contents down his throat in a single swig.

As he sat the drink down on the table he saw the door to the Den open to reveal Shepard and Tali standing silhouetted against the bright light outside. Wrex hearts picked up slightly as he saw Shepard step through the breach; to anybody else Shepard radiated confidence with her head held high, her shoulders back and the ease with which she wore the Carnivore Hand Cannon at her waist. However, Wrex knew Shepard, and to his eyes she was a wreck. He saw the rigidity in her shoulders, the twitch of her fingers as she resisted going for her gun, the sweat on her brow. It made Wrex angry to see his only friend so unnerved. However, her arrival meant that it was time to get serious.

“Get lost, doll.” He motioned the dancer away, only taking his eyes off Shepard to appreciate the dancer’s ‘assets’ as she crawled off the table. Just as he was watching what had to be the best ass he had seen in years walk back to the bar, Shepard’s voice sounded in his ear.

“Better stick to the pistol Wrex, don’t want any collateral today.” He turned back to find Shepard glaring at him from the bar. He knew she was right, the Eviscerator shotgun had quite a tight spread when fired at close range but the bar was crowded and the pistol offered greater accuracy and more shots per thermal clip. Still, Wrex loved his shotgun and when facing an unknown enemy he always preferred to have too much firepower rather than too little of it.

“Kill-joy.” He replied as he propped the shotgun against the chair leg. Still, he was careful to place it with the barrel to the ground so that he could snatch the handle in less than a second.

The next few minutes were when everything went from bad to severely fucked. The target entered right on cue, a well built turian in blue clothing and a black hood over his head that kept his face in complete shadow, Wrex couldn’t see his face. He did exactly what Wrex had expected; glanced around the room, and took a seat just by the door, right in Shepard’s blind spot. Tali was on the opposite side of the bar, hidden from Wrex’s view, he didn’t know if the target had clocked her but he assumed that he had, he must have noticed her accompanying Shepard through the wards and quarians kinda stood out on the Citadel. He was, however, fairly certain that the target hadn’t noticed him as he had kept his body relaxed and his eyes down. There was certainly no physical indication that he had been noticed. If the target had seen him he would surely have sensed the ambush he had walked into and would have legged it like a true turian coward.

However, just as Wrex was about to spring the trap Thane announced that six armed men would soon be joining the party. It sounded like a mercenary hit squad, and they had enough collective braincells to leave two men outside as a rear guard which left Thane unable to back them up without blowing his cover. This swung all the advantages back to the other side; even if Wrex hadn’t been compromised the element of surprise still left the numbers at five to three with Shepard completely out in the open. The only chance they had was to take them all out before any of them got a shot off.

The door opened again and Wrex saw the four new players standing in the threshold. He opened his comms to update Shepard.

“Okay,” he said. “four hostiles entering the bar, shotguns and pistols.”

As they entered Wrex gave each a quick assessment. Two turians and two humans, three of them looked like your average street thugs: civilian clothing, basic weaponry, overconfident and sloppy. The fourth was obviously more experienced, he was clearly the big dick of the group; a heavily scarred turian with expensive power armour and a scimitar shotgun. He was more cautious, taking the time to give the whole bar a once-over, instead of focusing instantly on Shepard as the others did.

Wrex watched as the group walked right past the hooded figure sitting by the door and split into two pairs; one pair walking clockwise and stopping at about the seven o’clock position while the scarred turian and a human walked toward Wrex. The human stopped just to the left and behind Shepard while the turian continued round a bit further and stopped five metres in front of Wrex.

Wrex was now convinced this was a hit, and it was gonna go down right now, they had Shepard in the perfect cone of fire.

“Get ready to rumble, people.” He said as his hand tightened around the handle of his pistol. He tensed his legs, ready to jump to his feet, and carefully activated his biotic implant, preparing a small biotic burst he could use at a moment’s notice. 

Suddenly, the hooded turian by the door stood up and started walking straight towards Shepard.

“Wait, Shepard the primary target is up, hes walking for you, 5 meters.”

 _What the hell is this?_ Wrex thought. He had figured the hooded guy was the customer or simply the recon man and these new players the hit squad. He had assumed this slippery little bastard would sit back and watch the hired guns do the dirty work. His hearts were beating a mile a minute as he watched the turian stalk directly towards her while she was still leaning against the bar facing the opposite direction.

“Four.”

He saw Shepard carefully reach for her gun without alerting the approaching threat.

 _Clever girl,_ he thought, she was drawing him in using herself as bait and was going to whip around at the last minute and get the drop on him. Wrex checked the other hitters hadn’t moved and reached his free hand below the table and took hold of his shotgun.

“Three metres.”

As the words left his lips he saw Shepard spring upright and begin to whirl around and the hooded turian froze on the spot, he was cannon fodder, Shepard had him caught off guard and his brains would soon be part of the decor. Wrex was waiting for this and immediately turned his attention to the two hitters on his side of the bar.

“GO LOUD!!” he bellowed into his comms. By the time Shepard had flinched, Wrex was already halfway to his feet, pistol in one hand, shotgun in the other. He noticed that the scarred turian, obviously more alert than his associates, was already in the process of raising his shotgun at Shepard and the human merc to his left wasn’t far behind. Wrex raised his pistol and aimed it directly at the centre of the human’s torso. As he was doing so, he activated his implant and, as quickly as possible, created a small mass effect field inside the turian’s body.

Within two seconds of Shepard springing up from the bar Wrex had his pistol aimed at the heart of the human and had the scarred turian doubled over in agony as his insides were crushed together by the gravity well inside his stomach. It was at this point Wrex’s mind flinched, there hadn’t been a gunshot. Shepard had had the drop on the turian and had to finish him quickly if they stood any chance of taking out all five hitters, so where was the goddamn gunshot?!

He couldn’t help but take his eyes off of his two targets and look over to the bar. There was Shepard, facing the Turian, gun pointed directly at his head ... but she was motionless, she just stood there as the turian raised a shotgun from his side and aimed it squarely at Shepard’s chest. It was with a sickening sense of horror that Wrex watched the blast of the shotgun explode out of the barrel with a deafening thunder in the confined space of the bar. Shepard’s shields didn’t stand a chance at such close range and Wrex saw her body jerk violently as she was launched airborne by the enormous force of the shot. She sailed over the bar, smashed against the drinks counter and fell out of sight behind the bar.

Wrex had always been known to have a hot temper, but in truth he rarely lost his calm, he was usually very calm and often in quite a good mood when he killed people. However, as he watched Shepard fly like a rag doll over the bar Wrex felt the rage flow through every sinew of his body. He turned his attention back to the two hitters in front of him. His pistol was still aimed at the human merc, who had now drawn his weapon but was aiming at thin air as he could no longer see his primary target. Wrex, almost in slow motion, squeezed the trigger and felt the pistol buck in his grip.

* * *

Meanwhile, outside Chora’s Den Thane had been waiting anxiously around the corner from the entrance. His commander was inside surrounded by enemies and he was stuck outside. A glance around the corner revealed the extent of his problem; two guards positioned outside the Den’s door, a human and a salarian, one facing in each direction. He could not approach the Den without revealing himself with twenty yards of open ground to cover before he reached the entrance. In the few seconds it took to cover that distance each of the enemies inside could draw their weapons and kill Shepard before he could reach her.

“Get ready to rumble, people.” He heard Wrex say over the comms, he was running out of time.

He desperately searched his surroundings for some way to gain an advantage ... There! Ten feet above the mercenaries ran a maintenance walkway which ran the entire length of the street, passing over Thane’s position. Access to these walkways required a security keycard, but Thane hadn’t become one of the most highly regarded assassins without bypassing a few security measures. He sprinted directly towards the wall opposite the walkway, gaining as much speed as possible. As he reached the wall he sprang off his left foot and planted his right at waist height and launched himself upwards, converting as much of his horizontal energy into vertical energy as he could. He brought his left foot up against the wall, now about six feet from the ground, and kicked himself upwards and away from the wall whilst whipping his shoulders around to face the opposite direction. The result was Thane being able to vault effortlessly over the railing onto the walkway.

“Wait, Shepard the primary target is up, he's walking for you, 5 meters.” Wrex again.

Thane ran along the walkway as fast as he could without making a sound, drawing his Predator pistol as he went. The Predator was less powerful than the more advanced Carnivore but Thane favoured the increased controllability of the Predator. He was almost directly above the mercenaries when he heard Wrex’s voice thunder through his comms again.

“GO LOUD!”

It was a couple of seconds before the first gunshot rang out, a single blast muffled by the closed door. Both mercenaries turned to face the door at the sound, and Thane used the distraction well. As more gunfire rang out from behind the door he dropped down silently behind the rear merc, his footfalls feather light as he approached the human. Unfortunately, it was just then that the salarian mercenary nearest the door remembered his job and turned around, seeing Thane standing less than four inches behind his human companion. Salarians were always tricky opponents once the element of surprise was lost, they moved fast and thought even faster. To defeat them in a straight fight Thane had to think three steps ahead.

Thane adjusted his plans quickly, the salarian’s gun was already being raised and Thane knew he would not have time to snap the human’s neck and close the distance to the salarian before he raised his weapon. Instead, he punched the barrel of his gun deep into the lower back of the human, causing him to gasp in pain, while grabbing him under the chin and pushing him forward towards his partner. Hiding behind his human shield, Thane quickly charged forward until the salarian’s gun was mere inches in front of the human’s chest. Thane chose his moment carefully to fire his weapon, blasting through the right flank of the human and simultaneously wrenched the man’s head to the left. The shot by itself was not likely to be lethal, but its purpose was not intended to kill, the crunching Thane felt in his fingers as the man’s vertebrae snapped left him assured that no gunshot was needed to kill him. Instead, the combined force of the shot and Thane wrenching his head around spun the human violently to the right, his shoulder hitting the barrel of the salarian’s pistol and forcing it off to the right while Thane whipped around to the left and came up right beside him with his gun pressed against his torso. The salarian turned to look at him in astonishment at realising his hopeless position. It was then that Tali’s voice came over the comms.

“Shepard’s down!”

Thane could hardly believe it as he kept eye contact with the salarian, who must have seen the torment in his eyes as he stood there. The salarian smiled cruelly despite his impending doom and started to laugh. Thane held the salarian across the shoulders as he fired twice through his enemy’s heart. 

As he released his grip and the salarian's body crumpled to the floor at his feet he looked up to see the door to the Chora’s Den open to reveal a turian standing in the doorway. He wore a black hood over blue clothing. He paused when he saw Thane standing over the two dead bodies, allowing Thane to take a good long look at his face. He had never met this turian personally, but almost every being in citadel space would recognise his face, the face of Saren Arterius. Thane looked at the clothes he wore, stained in parts with spots of blood ... red blood.

 _Shepard’s blood,_ he thought to himself as he raised his pistol.

At the same moment Saren punched his omni-tool and as Thane pulled the trigger his pistol erupted as Saren’s overload charge over-heated the firing mechanism and fried the thermal clip. Without another the gun was useless. Thane looked up at Saren just as he unleashed a biotic blast that sent him flying back against the wall. 

* * *

The Carnivore hand cannon was one of the most powerful handguns available, it shaved off relatively large slugs which could punch through all but the most advanced shields and armour that money could buy. The kickback from it could break a human’s wrist if they didn’t hold it securely. When the slug from Wrex’s Carnivore connected with the unarmoured and unshielded human mercenary, the impact blew away half of the ribs on the man’s left side and threw him sideways three feet through the air, he was a corpse before he hit the ground. Wrex was absently aware of other gunshots from other portions of the bar, but turned his focus to the scarred turian who was just recovering from the crippling pain he had endured a moment earlier. He had seen his teammate die and was now turning his focus to Wrex. However, by the time he had turned to face this new enemy the turian found himself staring straight down the barrel of Wrex’s shotgun, being held at arm’s length in one hand. He heard Tali in his comm implant saying that Shepard was down.

The turian knew he was beaten; his armour didn't stand a chance against a shotgun blast at such close range and he slowly started to raise his hands in surrender. He didn’t get them halfway before Wrex fired, the blast damn near cutting the turian in half. Wrex turned away from the carnage in front of him to see the other two mercenaries lying dead on the other side of the bar. Briefly searching for the hooded turian he saw him just as the door opened and the hooded turian ran out into the bright lights of the wards. Wrex immediately sprinted after him. As he passed close to the bar, he saw Tali leap over the counter to attend to Shepard, he briefly caught sight of the crumpled and motionless form of Shepard lying behind the bar, her red hair covering her face and a small trickle of blood pooling round her red hair.

The rage inside him intensified, burning hotter than the Tuchankan sun as he roared in fury and sprinted to the door. As he passed through into the fierce white lights of the wards he saw the dead bodies of two more mercenaries lying in the street. Looking further he saw Thane picking himself up from the corner to his right and the caught a brief glimpse of the turian disappearing around the corner.

“It’s Saren.” Thane said as he stood up.

 _What. The. FUCK._ he thought as the rage inside him intensified even more, he was struggling to maintain control of himself as he set off towards the markets after him.

“After him!” bellowed Wrex as he took off in pursuit. Thane was at his side as they barrelled round the corner and back into the markets. In front of them were panicked crowds as Saren pushed his way through the throng. Neither Wrex nor Thane hesitated to charge after him.

Wrex was surprisingly fast given his enormous bulk, his powerful legs able to carry even his hulking frame at a tremendous speed. Thane was equally as impressive, he flowed through the environment with perfect balance, fluidly passing around, over and under any obstacles in his path. As they both charged up the stairs to the main market level, they were gaining on Saren but he was still a long way ahead.

Saren, twenty yards ahead, pulled down a large advertisement board from where it was loosely bolted to a support column, blocking their way. Thane seemed to vault over the obstacle with ease, barely slowing his pace as he used a bench to spring himself over the board. Wrex, however, was slightly less graceful and instead charged shoulder first into the obstacle, shattering it in an explosion of bent metal and broken glass. The impact hurt, but his rage numbed the pain quite effectively and Wrex barely even flinched as he continued after Saren.

“He’ll head for the skyway!” Bellowed Wrex, if Saren made it to the main transport route he could disappear into the traffic and could be off the Citadel before they even started searching for him. Wrex suddenly saw Thane branch off to his left, stepping up on a bench, vaulting onto the roof of a small stall before he disappeared into the maintenance hatches above.

“I will cut him off, continue pursuit.”

Wrex could feel the acid building in his throat as his body tired but focused on the rage, Saren had shot Shepard, when he thought of that he could ignore the aches and the burning in his lungs and power through. He was finally gaining ground on Saren, he could smell his turian stench as he ran behind him, only fifteen feet separated them now. However, Saren was approaching the final section of the ward section and turned the corner after the medical facility. All he had to do now was double back down the narrow alleyway behind the markets and cut through to the Skyway behind it. As Wrex rounded the corner, he saw Saren standing only six feet in front of him in the doorway of the alley. He raised his hand cannon just as the door slid closed and the magnetic locks engaged, cutting Wrex off from his target. He roared in outrage as he felt Saren slipping through his fingers after having murdered his Commander and swore he would crush that turian’s head into pulp. 

* * *

Saren doubled over as the door slid closed. His lungs were burning and his muscles were screaming. He hadn’t been able to get a look at whoever was pursuing him, but had heard the disturbances behind him. Whoever they were, Shepard’s Quarian friend and the Drell from the entrance most likely, had been fast and he had to push himself to the limit to stay ahead of them. Whoever it was, they were now locked on the other side of this security door and it would take at least a few minutes, even for a quarian, to hack through the security locks. It was only fifty yards down the alleyway in which he now stood to the skyway and he would be off the citadel and back in the terminus systems within sixteen hours. After collecting his breath he turned to head down the alley, only to stop immediately in his tracks.

Halfway down the alley stood the Drell he had seen outside Chora’s Den, he wore a long leather coat and stood with his hands clasped, as if in prayer. As Saren slowly approached, the Drell started to speak.

“Amonkira, Lord of Hunters. Grant that my hands be steady, my feet swift and my blade strike true.”

A Drell assassin. He cracked his knuckles and tensed his muscles, advancing cautiously.

“And should the worst come to pass ... grant me forgiveness.”

The Drell finally opened his eyes and looked Saren square in the eyes.

“My name is Thane Krios,” he said before he reached behind his back and withdrew a deadly looking combat knife, long, straight and partly serrated, it was a knife designed to kill “and I shall be your end.”


	3. The Killers

The Citadel was approximately 40 kilometres long, consisting of four arms each the size of a small city. It was home to millions of humans, turians, krogan, asari and just about every other space faring species in citadel space, and every single one of them needed to breathe. Feeding these millions of pairs of lungs over dozens of square kilometres of city required an enormous amount of air. The air processing facilities needed for each ward were buried deep below the surface levels, unseen marvels that most of the people whose life they sustained never even considered. The air they produced was fed up to every cubic inch of the wards through thousands of miles of ducts and vents. Behind every wall, below every floor and above every ceiling ran this labyrinth of tunnels, one city running within another, like the arteries beneath the skin. This maze was completely unmapped by the resident species of the citadel, built by an unknown race and maintained by the Keepers, it was known only in tiny segments by the duct rats; brave or foolish children that used its smaller passages to hide from the more brutal elements of their life. Beyond the small sections that these children memorised the air ducts were an unmapped mystery.

However, this maze had been built for a purpose and like all things created for a purpose, there was logic in its construction. If one knew the logic behind the construction and the layout of the city it needed to feed, then the ventilation system could take you anywhere on the Citadel, no security check points, no guards, no cameras.

An assassin’s dream.

Thane Krios had operated on the Citadel numerous times over his career and in his line of work it paid to move undetected. He had spent countless hours studying the ventilation system, learning the thinking behind it, walking the streets and mapping it in his mind. Eventually Thane started using the ducts more often than he walked the streets; he had always felt uneasy walking the public streets of the Citadel. There were too many cameras, too many lights, too many C-Sec guards. Thane could disappear into a crowd better than anyone, but a drell on the citadel stood out, and Thane had always preferred it in the shadows.

However, travelling in the ducts was never safe. Logic could only lead you so far, there was a very good reason that most duct rats did not survive till adulthood. The ventilation system often surprised the rats with unexpected vertical falls or fans that crushed their bones to splinters in seconds. Thane had seen the destruction that these fans could inflict upon the body many years ago; while he was learning the system his guide, a duct rat, fell into a fan as he was explaining the system to Thane. It was the sound of the boy's bones snapping that Thane remembered as he leapt at full speed into the airducts.

 _This is foolish,_ he thought, _always slow, always careful._

He did not know this section of the ducts, sprinting at top speed through an unknown section of the system could easily lead to any number of horrible deaths ... but no. There was no time for slow, no time for careful. He had to reach the Skyway exit before Saren. He could not let him get away, he had most likely killed Shepard, or mortally wounded her.

Thane blocked out the image of Shepard lying with the same cold, glass eyes that he had seen in so many of his victims over the years, instead focusing on the tunnels ahead of him. He could only use the main shafts; he was too large for the secondary vents that the duct rats used. He ran as fast as the headspace allowed, the vent ahead veered left. He followed it without hesitation; the Skyway should be left of his current heading. He tore around the corner; this shaft was larger than the others, like the main arteries of the body, branching off into smaller versions of itself, feeding the rest of the body. He had moved about forty yards forward since the entrance of the ducts and had now turned approximately eighty degrees left, the alley connecting to the Skyway docks should only be twenty yards ahead. He ran ahead ten yards before he saw the shadow of the large circulation fan in the floor in front. His heart stopped. It was large, perhaps eight feet wide, he didn't have time to stop, it was too close, he had too much momentum. He instead accelerated, as he reached the edge he put all of his momentum into a single jump, at about a thirty degree angle, he reached the wall about three feet from the far edge. He planted his right foot at waist height and pushed again. The soft, rubbery soles of his boots gave him enough grip to launch himself the remaining distance, his foot touched the ground only inches into safe ground. At the next corner he stopped and looked around. There was an exit to his right, he sprinted the short distance, sliding through the opening blind and dropping the ten feet to the floor below.

He landed without a sound in the alley. Ahead of him was the exit to the street outside Chora's Den; to his right - the exit to the Skyway. He turned as he heard the sound of a door hissing closed behind him. There, only twenty meters away was Saren Arterius, he was facing away from Thane, doubled over and gasping for breath.

Thane stood silently and turned to face Saren, the door panel was flashing red, meaning that Saren had punched the emergency lock, this meant that Wrex was stuck on the other side of the doorway. Thane figured that it would take him at least a few minutes to backtrack through the wards to the other entrance of the alleyway which was far too long, Thane could not delay Saren for that length of time and capture him alive. He had one option; kill Saren Arterius, the longest serving and most decorated turian Spectre in history.

And with his gun discarded after Saren's overload at Chora's Den, he had to do it alone, and unarmed.

Straightening his back, he closed his eyes and clasped his hands in prayer. As he took a deep breath to slow his heart rate, he heard the sound of Saren taking two steps in his direction, followed by a barely audible hitch of breath as he noticed Thane and stopped in his tracks.

"Amonkira, Lord of Hunters. Grant that my hands be steady, my feet swift and my blade strike true," He felt his muscles loosen as he spoke the words, relaxing the tension and nerves out of his limbs. The footsteps started up again, he was being more cautious than before, but he still had the slightly heavy footfalls of the anxious and rushed, he knew he couldn't be held up for too long.

"And should the worst come to pass ... grant me forgiveness."

Taking a final deep breath, Thane opened his eyes and locked on to the shining blue eyes of his opponent. Reaching beneath his coat, he grasped the handle of the blade strapped between his shoulder blades. Flicking the catch holding it in its sheath he drew the blade, it was a single sharpened piece of black bark that he had carved many years ago as the penultimate task in his years of training on Kahje. After six years of combat, stealth and biotic training he had been sent into the Kahje wilds to find the Umbranemus. This unique species of tree grew only at the centre of an ancient ruin that was once the heart of Prothean civilization of Kahje, and was considered sacred to the Hanar, who believed that it was the home of the Enkindlers. He had been twelve years old when he had wandered the ancient streets of the ruin, marvelling at the sheer size of it.

In the centre of the ruined city was a large open square and it was here that the Umbranemus grew. For millennia the city had been a barren, lifeless wasteland, with no vegetation able to survive for long in the poisoned ground of the city, still radioactive from whatever cataclysm had destroyed the metropolis millennia ago. But given enough time life, in any circumstance, adapts. At the very heart of the city a single tree had evolved, with a bark as black as coal and tougher than steel to shield it from the eternal bombardment of radiation. Thane had prayed before the tree, thanking it for the gift he would remove from its flesh before using a small plasma cutter to take a single block of wood, barely a chip from its colossal form. In accordance with Hanar tradition, he had made his very first kill with the blade he had carved from the Umbranemus bark and from then on, he was an assassin.

He drew comfort from the familiar feel of the worn leather cord wrapped around the handle, from the astonishing weightlessness of the blade despite its fourteen inches in length. He never went anywhere without this blade, the organic nature of the materials meant that it could pass through any weapon scanners. In the twenty-seven years of carrying the blade, he had made only one change to it; the name "Irikah" inscribed on the blade.

Pushing the memories from his mind, he focused on Saren.

"My name is Thane Krios ... and I shall be your end."

Saren's only reply was a mocking scoff before resuming his advance, removing the gloves that would have otherwise made the two-inch talons on each of his fingers a considerably smaller factor in the next few minutes. Thane shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet as Saren charged the last two metres, lashing out with a vicious right-handed swipe. Thane leapt backwards away from the first strike, but stayed close enough to tempt Saren into immediately swinging a second. As Saren started the arc of his second swing Thane was already moving, shifting his momentum forward in a heartbeat and ducking his head he passed less than an inch under Saren's left arm as it slashed at where Thane had stood a second earlier. As Thane drew level with Saren's body he brought his knife in a slashing motion across Saren's chest, only to feel the screeching vibration as the stone-like blade scraped over metal.

_Recon armour._

Recon armour was a common compromise between protection and discretion in the espionage theatre as it was small enough to fit under clothing, only having ceramic plating over the soft leathery flesh of the chest and stomach. It also housed a surprisingly strong kinetic barrier generator for its small size, which was useless against a blade but the combination of the ceramic plating over the more vulnerable areas and the tough plating of the rest of the Turian body, it didn't leave a lot of places Thane could do much damage.

It was only a second before Saren was on him again, Thane saw his shoulders tense to throw a right cross punch, he began to pivot around the clumsy attack when Saren quickly darted out his right foot instead. The feint caught Thane off guard and the low kick sent Thane to one knee, Saren was instantly had a brutal punch aimed directly at Thane's head. He reacted quickly, punching his knife in a reverse grip downwards across Saren's thigh and following the momentum through to roll under the punch by millimetres and come up behind his adversary. The natural armour plating of Saren's thigh couldn't take the pressure Thane put behind the razor sharp edge, and he was rewarded with a sharp growl as the blade bit through the armour. It was a small cut, but it was a start.

* * *

Wrex, in a word, was pissed. He had been gaining on Saren after the chase through the Wards, but it wasn't enough. He had managed to stay far enough ahead to get to the alley that led to the skyway and lock the controls.

 _Centuries old and you never learned how to hack a fuckin’ door control!_ he thought.

He was so close; he could smell that turian stench from just a few seconds earlier. Backtracking to the other alley entrance was pointless, Saren would be gone in twenty seconds. He let out a roar of frustration and slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a sizeable dent in the otherwise pristine white walls of the citadel market. Despite the blinding rage screaming through every sinew of his body, he was vaguely aware of the sound of two weapons being drawn and powered up behind him. He didn't need to look, he could smell the mixture of virgin weaponry, over-cleaned uniforms and pant-shitting fear of the C-Sec officers behind him. He didn't give a shit about them, Saren was gone, Shepard was dead, and he really needed to shoot something.

One of the C-Sec idiots took a step forward, mustering up the balls to say something.

"Urdnot Wrex, you're under-"

"Fuck off before I blow you in half."

It was at that moment that Wrex heard something. A muffled noise from the other side of the doorway, so quiet he wasn't even sure he had heard it at all. Was that a turian shouting?

Wrex stalked up to the C-Sec officer who raised his gun at Wrex's approach. Wrex didn't flinch, this human didn't have the guts to shoot. Wrex stalked up to him and held out his hand.

"Key card."

The C-Sec officer looked from Wrex to his outstretched hand, then back to his face in confusion.

"Wha-" he stammered. "No!"

 _Wrong answer_. Wrex thought. The officer didn't even have time to roll with the punch, Wrex hit him and he hit the ground like a sack of shit, unconscious before he hit the floor. The other officer simply stood terrified as Wrex took the first guard’s key card and walked over to the security terminal on the wall. Inserting the key card Wrex pulled up the local security feed from the alleyway. There was Saren, only a dozen yards through the door, fighting with Thane.

* * *

Saren had proved even more capable in combat than Thane had anticipated. He had the advantage in both reach and power, but he also had tremendous discipline and speed of mind. Thane had been able to get through his guard a few times and inflict a few injuries but Sarens natural armour plating with the additional recon armour ensured that they were fairly minor so far. Thane had been able to stay out of reach of Saren's talons so far, but had taken some solid punches and kicks.

Seeing Saren's left arm raise a little too high in his guard stance, Thane darted in and stabbed his knife up towards the soft flesh of the armpit. Saren, however, was waiting for this and pivoted as fast as he could and punched at Thane's wrist with his forearm. Thane knew he was in trouble as he felt the impact send his blade spinning from his grip; he took advantage of Saren's focus on his wrist, stepping in close and bringing his left elbow into the side of Saren's face. Saren stumbled a step backwards, Thane took a step closer to Saren and planted his foot against Saren's thigh and kicked himself upward. As he did this, he punched his other knee upwards and put both hands to the back of Saren's head, pulling his face forward to connect with Thane's knee with brutal force.

Thane had expected Saren to stumble backwards under the intense pain he must have felt with his newly injured nose, but as he reached the ground again Saren was already launching another attack. Having not yet recovered his balance, Thane couldn't avoid the punch that was only an inch from his face, and instead rolled his head as it connected, lessening the impact but losing sight of his target for a moment. Saren used this moment well and before Thane could recover from the punch, he felt Saren's talons tear across his chest. The pain burned through his senses as he staggered backwards and looked at his wounds. They were deep and painful, but not critical.

He looked up again and met Saren's eyes, stepping back into his combat stance once again. There was a triumphant glint in Saren's eyes and his mandibles twitched into a slight smile as he confidently began stalked towards Thane once more.

* * *

Wrex growled at the security terminal, Thane wouldn't last. He was good, hell he was lethal but Saren had all the advantages. He was more powerful, had longer reach and still had a something resembling a weapon. Thane was having to dance around a hell of a lot more than Saren just to keep from getting torn apart and without a blade he wouldn't last long.

Saren was still there, but Wrex couldn't get to the bastard! He was stuck on the wrong side of a security door and Saren had locked it down, not even the C-Sec key card would override it. He punched the wall again in frustration, not even acknowledging the whimper of fear that escaped the human C-Sec officer behind him. He couldn't believe that Thane was stuck fighting Saren unarmed while Wrex was only feet away armed to the teeth, one blast from his shotgun would blow Saren in hal -

It was in the middle of that thought when Wrex remembered a moment from two years ago. He wheeled around and charged back towards the markets. The sight of the heavily armed krogan marching back towards the crowded streets seemed to inspire the human C-Sec to dig around his shorts and find a pair. He chose this moment to plant himself in Wrex's path and muster all the authority he had in him.

"Stop!"

Wrex neither knew nor cared what kind of fucked up logic was going through this pathetic human's mind when he concluded that placing his two hundred pounds of soft meat in the path of a six hundred pound krogan and saying "Stop" would end well. Wrex didn't flinch as he barged straight through the man, sending him sprawling to the floor with a simple shrug of his shoulder. In a few seconds he was at a jog and back onto the main market street, punching in the setting on his Eviscerator shotgun for incendiary rounds.

The shop he was looking for was twenty yards down the street. He barged through a crowd of chatting salarians and reached the door at a full sprint. Two years ago he had owed Morlan a small fortune for a custom order he had smuggled in for him after the destruction of Sovereign. Instead, Wrex had settled for helping Morlan set up a more permanent "Famous Shop" located on the recently destroyed and rebuilt promenade. Morlan, however, was a tight-ass with credits and Wrex had been amazed at how seamlessly the crap materials used for the construction could be made to blend seamlessly into the rest of the surroundings with a little help from the keepers.

As he charged through the shop towards the back wall, the other patrons had the sense to dive out of his way, while Morlan ducked under the cash counter in the far corner. Wrex raised his shotgun and blasted the remaining two shots of the thermal clip into the wall ahead of him. The devastating force of the blast dented the wall in several places, and the stench of the thermite paste burning through the high density plastics of the wall were instant. But still, the keepers were good at their jobs and the wall was alot more intact than Wrex had hoped for.

 _This is gonna hurt_. thought Wrex as he put his shoulder down and charged with all his might.

* * *

Thane felt a tight feeling in his chest, his breathing was laboured and his limbs felt heavy. It was true that Thane had not been involved in such a prolonged - or such a strenuous - fight in many years but he was still in near perfect physical condition, it should not be affecting him this badly.

_Kepral's_

He had managed to avoid any more serious encounters with Saren's talons but without a weapon he had to get in closer than before to deal any damage. He had taken fewer blows than Saren, but Saren had much more power behind each strike and each impact further sapped Thane's strength. Despite his bloody nose and obvious fatigue, Saren was growing in confidence as he sensed Thane's weakening state and pressed forward once again. Thane collected himself and focused. He recognized Saren's right feint and ducked under the following left hook, unleashing a biotic blast into Saren's chest that sent him stumbling backwards a few yards. Thane sucked in a deep breath, forcing breath into his tight lungs and summoning every drop of energy in his body as he sprinted towards Saren, jumping sideways he used the wall of the alley to kick himself high enough in the air to aim a neck snapping kick at Saren's head.

Saren, however had recovered quicker than Thane could close the distance. Seeing the kick coming just in time, he reached up and grabbed Thane's ankle in one hand and the top of his thigh in the other. It was with a sickening sense of complete hopelessness that Thane felt his momentum shift as Saren turned and wrenched his leg much like he was swinging a sledgehammer. Thane hit the floor with devastating force, driving the air from his lungs while the impact of his head on the unforgiving tile knocked him to the very edge of consciousness.

He had failed Shepard.

He tried to focus on Saren as he stood over him, but his eyes wouldn't focus, his ears were ringing and his limbs had no strength in them. He waited for the end to come, for the sharp pain at his throat followed by the release of death.

But it did not come, he could make out Saren's form still standing above him, breathing heavily. Thane heard his voice as if through a thick fog.

"You may be, Thane Krios ... but not today." He said as turned away. "Tell Shepard I said hello."

Just as Saren was about to reach the intersecting alley that led to the Skyway, the wall ahead of him suddenly erupted as the huge form of a krogan exploded through the wall in a shower of sparks and molten metal and crashed into the opposite wall. The air was instantly choked by the smell of thermite paste and the mixture of smoke and concrete dust hid the krogan from Thane's view momentarily. Saren had stopped, obviously completely dumbfounded by the unexpected turn of events. Thane suddenly saw Wrex explode out of the wall of smoke, clutching his shotgun by the barrel and swinging it like a club. Saren was unable to get out of the way in time and the impact lifted him off his feet and crashing against the wall. Before he could recover from the blow Wrex delivered a brutal punch that would have crushed the skull of a human and levelled his pistol at Saren's head.

* * *

_Goddamn that felt good._ Wrex thought as he watched Saren spit blood as he sat against the wall. It looked like Thane had put up a hell of a fight, Saren's clothing was torn to shreds and he could see a few bloody patches where his blade had bitten through the armour. Looking around he saw Thane just getting to his feet, albeit a bit shakily. His eyes were drawn back to Saren as he coughed a large globule of blue blood onto the floor before speaking.

“Urdnot Wrex, still wielding the subtlety of a sledgehammer, I see.” He said.

Wrex only scoffed in response as he raised his pistol to Saren’s forehead.

“Stay dead this time.” He smirked as he started to squeeze the trigger.

“Stop!” Thane said as he kicked the barrel of Wrex’s pistol away from Saren’s head. Wrex instantly had him by the collar of his coat, a few years ago he would have killed anyone for doing the same thing; perhaps he was going soft. Thane, ever the stoic, did not struggle or protest. “We need to question him.”

Wrex growled at the suggestion. “He killed Shepard!”

“Shepard isn’t dead.” Saren said from the floor.

“Ok, bedtime.” Wrex said, smashing the handle of his pistol against Sarens chin, knocking him unconscious and guaranteeing one hell of a head-ache if he lived long enough to wake up. “Mommy and Daddy need to chat.”

“Are your comms still functional?” asked Thane.

“Nah, busted when I hit the wall.” Wrex said as he tried in vain to get anything but static in his earpiece. Looking around, he nodded to a terminal near the door to the Skyway. “Call the Den.”

As Thane moved over to the console, Wrex leant against the wall opposite Saren, keeping his gun on him even as he lay unconscious. He should have felt his heart rate slowing, the aches and pains of his body coming to the foreground of his consciousness as the adrenaline retreated from his veins. Instead, he felt his hands shake and his hearts pound with barely controlled rage. Shepard was as close as any human could get to being an Urdnot, and to stand here with such an enemy at his feet, defeated after a sneak attack on one of his clan and not be able to rip the bastard limb from limb was maddening. He rolled his shoulders and, after checking Saren was still out, closed his eyes while he took three deep breaths. In through the nose ... hold it ... out through the mouth. The asari chick, Liara, had taught him this trick on the Normandy after Shepard had nuked the genophage cure on Virmire, and while he thought T’Soni was a bit soft for a fighting job, this whole breathing thing sure as hell worked; it must have saved a dozen lives and then some over the past few years. With a firm hold on his rage secured, he opened his eyes to see Thane returning and straightened up expectantly.

“The barman cannot find them.” Thane said flatly.

“What the hell does that mean?” Wrex said.

“It means we left.”

Looking up the alley, both men were stunned to see Shepard striding through the hole Wrex had smashed through the wall. She looked like hell: there was a gash along her hairline, blood was caked in her hair and smeared down her neck but the wound had been treated with medi-gel and was no longer bleeding. She was walking hunched and her breathing was short, measured and raspy; probably a broken rib or two.

“Are you alright?” Thane asked, concern in his voice.

“He used a concussive shot, bottles did more damage than the gun.” She said, absently touching a finger to the sizeable cut on her head. She turned to Thane, eyeing the wounds on his chest and the brusing on his face. He straightened up as he noticed, trying to mask to pain and dizziness he felt.

“You OK?” She asked.

“I will be.”

With a respectful nod, she proceeded past him and stood over Saren. Tali, following close behind Shepard, handed Thane his Predator pistol. Nobody spoke, Wrex stood motionless, almost afraid to breathe lest the sound disturb Shepard. As much he hated Saren, he knew that she feared and loathed him more than anyone: she had followed the trail of death, destruction and cruelty that he left all over the galaxy and had lost a friend in the process, a good man. After a few moments, Shepard still hadn’t moved. She stood over Saren’s form, simply staring at him blankly. Eventually, Tali put a hand on her shoulder, snapping her out of whatever thoughts were racing through her mind.

“What should we do?” asked Tali.

“We could take him to the C-Sec station.” Wrex suggested.

“I disagree,” Thane said, which earned an instinctive grunt of disapproval from Wrex. “Respectfully, of course. C-Sec’s security measures are inadequate. It would also be near impossible to conceal the fact that we have him in custody, which may get out to any companions he has.”

“No.” Shepard said, finally dragging her eyes away from Saren’s form and looking at her crewmates. “Get him to the Normandy.”


	4. The Sphinx

For the second time that day Shepard sat in a medical facility wincing as Dr Chakwas injected the specially programmed medi-gel into her system to treat her fractured ribs. This gel was comprised of thousands of microscopic robots, each with its own specific role; some focused in on the fractured bone, filling the fracture with a cement-like paste, while others anesthetized the area and treated other internal injuries. These machines were a medical revolution and meant that most injuries could be fixed without invasive and risky surgery. Still, they hurt like hell while they worked. Shepard, of course, was used to it after over a decade in the military, and barely registered the pain while she sat there; she felt as if she was drowning in a sea of impossible questions. 

“The process will take about twenty minutes but it will be tender for a few days, Commander.” Chakwas said, sounding like a disapproving mother patching up a grazed knee. “I _would_ suggest that you take it easy for a few days but I doubt that you’d listen.”

“Thanks, Doc.” She said as she stood and flexed her shoulder as EDI’s voice came over the intercom system.

“The prisoner is secured in the briefing room and ready for interviewing, Shepard. I was able to erase all security footage of the confrontation from Citadel Security databases until the situation is resolved. Joker is ready to initiate exterior lockdown on your command.”

“Thanks EDI.”

“Oh yeah, by the way, Commander,” Joker’s voice echoed throughout the medical bay over the intercom. “When you said you had a high risk prisoner you might have mentioned it was a damn ghost! And then you go and order us to seal ourselves in this tin can with him? Thanks a bunch for that.”

“I don’t want to risk any friends he might have trying to launch a rescue mission. Just keep an eye out.”

“Alright, but if he starts floating through walls I’m outta here.”

As she headed towards the door, Thane stood up from the bed where he was awaiting treatment for his own wounds. Shepard spoke before he moved to follow her.

“Relax, Thane.” She said comfortingly “We can handle it from here. You’ve done enough.”

After a second, Thane reluctantly sat back down as Chakwas approached him. Shepard headed out of the med bay and towards the elevator. She saluted the two guards at the elevator doors and punched the button for the combat information centre. Leaning against the wall of the elevator she held her head in her hands and tried to gather her thoughts.

This morning she had woke feeling like they stood a fighting chance against the Reapers. They were the most terrifying thing Shepard could have imagined but the Protheans had, as their final act of defiance in the face of extinction, given them the advantage they so desperately needed. She had to hand it to the Reapers, they had built the perfect trap. By building the Citadel they had guaranteed that whatever civilization built up in their absence would use it as their centre of government. By using the same structure as a giant mass relay which they used to launch their assault, it guaranteed that the centre of a civilizations government was the first to be destroyed. They had instant access to the very heart and leaders of every race that could stand against them, but not this time. With the destruction of Sovereign the Reapers were cut off from their mass relay and with the Collectors out of the picture their biggest ally was lost as well; this gave Shepard time and the galaxy a chance.

But now, with Saren back so suddenly and no explanation, Shepard felt like there were enemies in every shadow. As the elevator doors opened she saw the Normandy command centre in full alert. She had radioed ahead and put the ship in full battle readiness, she needed everyone at their best until they knew what was happening. As she expected the crew had responded perfectly; brushing of what must have been hellish hangovers and getting the ship ready for full scale war in minutes. By the time that Thane, Wrex, Tali and herself had walked through the airlock with Saren the security team were fully armed and armoured. They took Saren away to the briefing room in preparation for his interrogation, followed by Wrex who refused to let the turian out of his sight. Shepard and Thane went down to the med-bay for treatment while Tali had assembled and briefed the team members that were still on the Normandy.

As she turned to walk towards the armoury Shepard saw Garrus walk through the airlock of the Normandy. He looked perfectly relaxed, much like she had felt this morning; he had a bounce in his step that she had not seen in a long time and was holding a large box of cooked klixen larvae. While Shepard couldn’t eat these little bug snacks that turians seemed to love so much and found the thought of doing so sickening, the look on Garrus’ face as he popped one in his mouth was of pure bliss and in spite of the past few hours Shepard found herself smiling; she didn’t think she had ever seen him so care-free.

However, as he reached into the box to grab another snack, Shepard saw him pause and look around him. She watched his muscles tighten and his eyes sharpen as he noticed the crew members staring at the sensor terminals and sitting resolutely at their battle stations. As he scanned the combat deck his eyes fell on Shepard, with blood still smeared on her face, neck and arms: his eyes darkened. He marched up to her, his eyes a mix of anger and concern, the spring in his step gone. She missed it.

“Shepard, are you alright?” He asked, taking her injured arm carefully into his gloved talons, examining the cuts that she received when she fell among the smashed remains of a dozen bottles in Chora’s Den. “What happened?”

Shepard gently removed her hand from Garrus’ before motioning him to follow her and proceeding into the armoury.

“To be honest Garrus I have no idea. Looks like a failed assassination attempt in Chora’s Den, seven men. Thane spotted someone tailing me and Tali in the markets, Wrex was already at the Den so we thought we’d take him there.”

She used a cloth usually used for cleaning weapons to wipe the worst of the caked blood from her face and neck while drawing a couple of thermal clips from the supply. She began checking her Carnivore hand cannon for any damage or blockages as she continued.

“The hit squad showed up at Chora’s Den, the spotter moved in so we hit pre-emptively but I...” She paused. What had she done?

 _I froze,_ she thought.

“He got a shot off, hit me with a concussive shot, sent me over the bar. Hence...” she motioned to the gash on her head, already knitting together as the medi-gel smeared over it worked away unnoticed.

“A concussive shot?” Garrus said, confused. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know.” She said as she placed her pistol on the magnetic lock on her belt and moved into the corridor that lead between the armoury, science lab and the briefing room. She knew she had to tell him, but she couldn’t find the words. Why was it so hard to tell him? “Anyway, Tali, Wrex and Thane took care of the others but the spotter ran.”

“Commander...” Garrus

“Thane and Wrex caught him though.” She continued, cutting him off. “You should have seen the place, Wrex tore apart half the markets to get to him.”

“Shepard.”

“He charged through a damn wall -“

“Jane!” Garrus reached out and grabbed her arm, spinning her to face him outside of the briefing room doors. “What aren’t you telling me?”

He stared into her eyes, searching, and she suddenly felt vulnerable under his gaze.

At that moment the doors to the briefing room opened, and both turned to see the wall of flesh and armour that was Grunt standing in front of them.

“We’re ready.” He said as he moved out of the way. Only then could Garrus see into the briefing room. His eyes immediately locked in on the figure sitting at the head of the table. Sitting confidently, even with his hands in handcuffs in front of him stared back the eyes of Saren Arterius.

Immediately Garrus had a pistol in his hand aimed straight at Saren. The look in his eyes was pure murder, a hatred more fierce than Shepard had ever seen in him, it almost frightened her. She reached out and put a hand on his outstretched forearm.

“Stand down, Garrus.” She said softly. “It’s ok.”

It took a few moments for the words to penetrate through the anger and confusion on his face, but eventually Garrus lowered his weapon, though his hard gaze never left Saren’s eyes.

The others in the room visibly settled back down from where they had leapt up as Garrus had drawn his weapon. All of the remaining team members were present: Miranda and Jacob sat at opposite end of the table from Saren while Tali, Jack and Grunt all stood leaning against the wall around the room. Wrex stood behind Saren’s left shoulder, seemingly refusing to be more than three feet away from his captive at any time. The other members of the team had disbanded back to their old lives: Zaeed had taken his payment and left as soon as they had returned from the Omega 4 relay, planning on reclaiming his position in the Blue Suns; Kasumi had vanished within six hours of getting to the citadel, leaving only a note in Shepard’s inbox thanking her and wishing her luck in the future; Mordin returned to the clinic on Omega; Samara had bought a small ship and went back into asari space to continue her justicar duties and Legion had requested a small ship and headed back beyond the Perseus Veil.

“C’mon Garrus, sit down.” Shepard said quietly. As Garrus finally relented and moved around the table, standing rigidly in the middle of the room.

Seeing that Garrus was at least not going to execute him then and there, Shepard turned her focus to Saren, still sitting calmly at the head of the table. The sight of him still didn’t seem real to her, after going through to much to kill him and for him to now be sitting here seemingly as healthy as ever was like some bad dream. Despite the blue blood that had dried as it ran from his nose and the few torn patches of clothing, some with blood visible on them, he seemed in perfect health. The only thing notable was that he seemed to be completely organic, the synthetic augmentations that Sovereign integrated into his anatomy seemingly removed; even his entire left arm was once again Turian, instead of the geth-like replacement that was evident when they had fought on the Citadel. He almost seemed amused by the situation as he looked around at the other team members casually.

“Drell assassins, human convicts … Cerberus. Your recruiting methods have certainly taken a turn for the sinister, Shepard.”

“Says the man who allies with genocidal Reapers.” She said as she sat in the chair closest to him. As much as it unnerved her, she needed to be close to him, to look into his eyes as he spoke. She needed her answers, and she needed to be sure that they were true.

“Point taken.” He replied, shrugging.

Shepard let the moment lie for a second before continuing.

“I seem to remember killing you, Saren. I also remember Sovereign melting your skin off and killing you again. For you to show up and try to kill me after all this time seems a little rude.”

“My, my.” Saren said, shaking his head condescendingly. “Aren’t you the hypocrite.”

He sat back, relaxing into the deep chair, resting his bound hands on his knee.

“But I wasn’t trying to kill you, we both know that if I had been, you would be in a coffin by now.” Shepard ignored the sideways glance that Garrus gave her. “I was actually saving your life: I had intended for something more subtle but the circumstances forced the alternative.”

Wrex growled behind him. “Bullshit.”

Shepard silenced him with a look before turning her attention back to Saren.

“Elaborate.” She ordered.

“The mercenaries showed up earlier than expected, when I approached you to warn you about them you pulled your weapon. The mercs were reacting so I had to act quickly.”

“So why run?”

“Well I don’t imagine your crewmembers were much inclined to let me keep my head had I stayed.”

“Very true.” Tali chimed in.

“I’m still not convinced it’s a bad idea.” Garrus stated. Saren gave a slight chuckle in response as he turned to look at Garrus.

“That’s what I always liked about you Garrus,” he said “you were never afraid to do what was necessary. You could have become such a promising Spectre, but alas you left to go play Robin Hood all over the galaxy.”

“I had far too much fun killing you the first time, Saren.” Garrus growled, his hand resting on the pistol at his hip. “Don’t tempt me.”

“Easy Garrus.” Said Shepard, she had never seen him so itching to kill somebody since Sidonis. She didn’t like seeing him like this but had to keep focused on Saren.

“If we could take a few steps back for a moment.” Shepard said, keeping firm control of the conversation. “I’d like to tackle the more obvious mystery of how exactly you’re still breathing.”

“Project Osiris.” Saren said simply.

“Which is?”

“Can you not guess, Shepard? Have the pieces not fallen into place?” Garrus said, obviously enjoying Shepard’s apparent confusion. “Osiris? The Egyptian god of the dead, the ‘Lord of Silence’, killed by his brother only to be resurrected. You should read more.”

“Robin Hood and Egyptian mythology, you seem to know a lot about human culture for someone who hates us.” Shepard said, genuinely surprised. Saren’s face suddenly became firm and serious as his eyes locked onto hers, it sent a chill down her spine.

“Know thy enemy, Shepard.”

She ignored the goose bumps rising on her arms as he continued to stare at her intently.

“What is project Osiris?” she asked, “and who conducted it?”

Shepard hated seeing Saren enjoying this so much as he chuckled quietly in his seat. Wrex, obviously tired of the mind games, took a step forward and sent a hammer blow of a punch into Saren’s side, cutting off his laughter and making him grunt in pain. He took a moment to catch his breath before sitting up straight again, still smiling.

“It’s a Cerberus operation, Shepard. Authorised by your Illusive Man.”

 _Impossible!_ Shepard thought. It was true that she had defied him when she destroyed the Collector base, but surely he wouldn’t resurrect **Saren** for vengeance.

“Think about it, Shepard.” said Saren, seeing the turmoil on her face. “Who else has such technology. Every bit of progress Lawson made on resurrecting you was fed directly into Project Osiris.”

A thousand different thoughts, explanations and theories were swimming through Shepard’s mind. Finally, she decided to simply go with it: she couldn’t know the truth until she had the full story, so she would keep him talking and if there was a hole, she would find it.

“Why?” she asked confidently, “You almost destroyed the galaxy.”

“Of course he never intended to release me. Project Osiris was tasked to rebuild my body to study the effects of long term indoctrination on a physiological level. Sovereign took its time with me, Shepard. Indoctrination is usually done by breaking down the minds defences, a brute force attack that overpowers the mind, but it leaves the subject hollow after a while. You saw the colonists on Feros, they were almost crippled by the Thorian’s control. But Sovereign couldn’t do that to me, it needed me. It played it slowly, more like seduction that oppression. I was the only being that had been indoctrinated so slowly and so completely as to remain sane while it did so.

“Of course, when the Illusive Man saw the potential of the technology operative Lawson was developing, he changed the project’s parameters. My tissue showed no effects of the process, its all in the mind. He woke me up, Shepard. The indoctrination is a two way link when done like it was to me, I had been inside of Sovereign’s mind, just as it had been in mine. Nobody else knew more about the Reapers. When you were fighting the Collectors on Horizon, I was sitting through countless interviews and psychological evaluations.”

“And…?” Shepard asked.

“I am no longer indoctrinated, Shepard.” he said seriously. “Whether its been destroyed from the destruction of Sovereign or lost in the process of rebuilding me I don’t know, but I have myself back.”

Shepard held up a hand to stop him. “So, you know the Reapers’ plans?”

“In part.” He said, shrugging.

“So you knew about the Collectors?”

“No,” he said, “Sovereign didn’t deal with them, they must have been orchestrated by a different Reaper.”

“Harbinger,” Miranda spoke for the first time in the interview. “There were times when we fought them when a Collector would change, as if something else was controlling it. It called itself Harbinger.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

Shepard didn’t tell him about the information on Harbinger they were able to download from the Collector base, she didn’t want such information to be known to anyone who didn’t need it. The details on Harbinger were being analyzed for anything they could use against the Reapers, it would take time with so much data, but Shepard was confident they could uncover some way of beating them.

“So, you were brought back to study indoctrination, but you’re no longer indoctrinated?”

“Yes. Seemed like an awful waste of money, but I certainly didn’t complain.”

“And they just … let you go?” Shepard said, unconvinced.

“Well, they may have done eventually, but as your mission against the Collectors progressed the Illusive Man became concerned about your methods. You don’t see the big picture Shepard, sometimes there is no room for morality in war but you can’t see that; you’re far too sanctimonious to do what is needed in order to win, and it will cost you this war.”

“I’m not going to argue morality with you of all people, Saren” Shepard said dismissively, “What happened next?”

“The Illusive Man hired me to, shall we say, reclaim my purpose.”

“Which is…?”

“To protect this galaxy, Shepard. To do what you won’t, what you are too weak to do, what MUST be done.”

Garrus scoffed from where he still stood rigidly “Protect? You tried to destroy the galaxy, you’re a traitor!”

“I’M NOT!!“ Saren roared, slamming his cuffed hands onto the table. Garrus once again raised his pistol, but Saren made no move to rise to his feet, instead remaining seated and staring angrily at Garrus over the barrel of his pistol. “Everything I ever did I did to protect this galaxy!”

Shepard let the two men stare each other down for almost a full minute, allowing each of them to collect themselves before she changed the subject, keeping the discussion away from opinions and focusing on the facts.

“When did they release you?”

“Six weeks ago,” He said, placing his cuffed hands back in his lap and settling back into the seat again, “Small one man planet-hopper but I have the money to hire merc crews if need be.”

“Cerberus didn’t give you a crew, or a team?” Shepard asked “Seems a little unlikely, given their resources.”

“My mission needed to be a little more … subtle. A small craft can get in and out of most systems without much scrutiny.”

“For short range flights.” Tali said from the wall, “There is no way one person could operate a ship through mass relays, run the systems, maintenance and sensors.”

“Cerberus built the ship bespoke, multiple shipboard VI’s handle the ship’s systems, all I do is pilot the ship in atmo and handle the weapons.”

“Where is this ship, and what’s its name?”

“Its name is the Ascalon, its currently at the Binary Helix docks in the Tayseri Ward.”

“Jacob,” Shepard said without looking away from Saren, “Contact C-Sec, have them look into it.”

“Will do, Commander.” He replied as he stood and left the briefing room. Shepard kept her gaze on Saren until she heard the door close behind her.

“How did you hear about the assassination attempt?”

“I didn’t, the Illusive Man sent me the information. They were Eclipse mercs hired after the news of your survival was confirmed by the Alliance, although he didn’t know who hired them. All he knew was that the hit was to take place on the Citadel. I was to stop them, undetected if possible. Obviously that part didn’t go as planned.”

Shepard thought for a moment. “There’s not exactly a lot of love between the Illusive Man and myself right now. Why would he send you to protect me?”

“You may have betrayed him by destroying the Collector base, but he understands humanity as an entity. Without you they would simply continue to ignore the threat that we both know is on its way, and would cower in fear when they eventually arrive. You are still a powerful symbol that humanity needs, and that makes you valuable enough to keep alive for now.”

“I’m flattered.”

“The C-Sec report has been filed, Shepard.” EDI’s voice chimed over the intercom system, “Five of the mercenaries have been identified, all of them have suspected ties to Ecplipse enforcement and racketeering operations. Two of them are wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of a Salarian politician on Illium last month. The report is putting the shooting down as a failed robbery attempt on Chora’s Den.”

“Doesn’t prove anything.” Garrus snarled.

“They were hired a week ago and set out immediately from an Eclipse base on Invictus. They arrived two days ago under the guise of a merchant and bodyguards.” Saren said.

“EDI…?” Shepard said without breaking eye contact. She waited silently for a moment as EDI ran her way through Citadel Security systems. After almost a full minute the synthetic, feminine voice sounded again.

“Facial recognition confirms the mercenaries arriving two days ago. Citadel Security records state that the ship departed from Illium.”

“That makes sense,” Garrus said. Shepard looked at him, surprised. “It’s a common way of smuggling criminals onto the Citadel, we saw a lot of it at C-Sec. They hit a merchant ship en-route and assume the identity of whoever was on board. Anyone extra can pose as bodyguards, and any ships going from Illium to the Citadel have to go through the Minos Wasteland relay…”

“Which is the closest relay to Invictus.” Said Miranda before Garrus continued.

“…and because the Terminus systems don’t share their security records with the Citadel and most corporations keep their information confidential it’s almost impossible to check the passengers of non-chartered ships. Only the ships themselves.”

“O.K.” Shepard said, taking a deep breath, collecting her thought for a second before continuing. “Do you have a location of the Eclipse base on Invictus?”

“Of course.”

“OK, Grunt, take him to the brig.”

Without a word Grunt hauled Saren to his feet and marched him out the door, nobody moved as the door slid closed and the two very different sets of footsteps padded towards the elevator. Only when Shepard heard the sound of the elevator descending towards the engineering deck did Jack speak up.

“So,” she said, “Airlock or shotgun?”

Shepard was silent for a moment before she answered.

“Neither.” She said as she stood from the table and began to march out the room. “Miranda, I know you have a loyalty to Cerberus, but I need to know whether the Osiris Project exists.”

“It’s possible,” said Miranda, “It was a bit strange, the Illusive Man demanded a link to all our research data for the duration of the project. He usually is only interested in results, not work-in-progress, I assumed it was just because he had more invested in the Lazarus Project, but it’s possible he was passing all our data along to Osiris.”

“Any way you can make contact with him?” Shepard asked.

“That may not be easy. The Normandy is still linked into the Cerberus network but after the Collector base he’s completely cut himself off from us, I don’t know how to get through to him.”

“What about other Cerberus groups?” Tali asked, Miranda shook her head.

“Every cell operates independently, no cell knows anything about the others.”

“OK,” Shepard said, “just put the word wherever you can, Cerberus fences, supply stations, agents, he’ll eventually get the word.”

Miranda nodded and strode out of the room, leaving only Tali, Garrus and Jack stood around the room. Shepard stood motionless, her mind spinning with questions and theories, grasping in the darkness for answers she couldn’t find without following these insane events further into the black. Finally, she turned raised her head and stood from her chair.

“Tali, get down to the brig and get those coordinates from Saren’s omni-tool, along with anything else you can get from it, I want every piece of data you can rip from that thing. EDI, prep the systems to make way.”

Garrus, who had been staring blankly at the wall, lost in his own thoughts, suddenly snapped back to the present with shock on his face. He turned to Shepard as Tali left the room.

“Wha-” he stammered, “Shepard?”

“Joker,” Shepard called into the intercom, “Get the rest of the supplies stowed and set course for Invictus.”

“Shepard,” Garrus said, “What the hell are you doing?”

“What do you think?” she replied, a fire back in her eyes now that she had some form of a plan. “We’re gonna go to Invictus and burn those mercenaries out and find out who hired them.”

“You can’t be serious!” Garrus fumed. “He’s lying, Shepard! You can’t let him set us up like this.”

“You said it yourself, Garrus, he could have killed me in Chora’s Den and his story makes sense.”

“That doesn’t change who we’re dealing with here, we’ve both seen what kind of man he is. We’ve both seen what he’s capable of.”

“What are you suggesting, executing him?”

“Shepard, some people are just too dangerous to be around. Lock him up … or put him down.”

Shepard suddenly felt an anger rise in her. She couldn’t blame Garrus for not trusting Saren, but to hear him talk so openly about killing an unarmed prisoner set her blood to boil. She marched towards Garrus until she was barely a foot away from him, standing toe to toe and staring him in the eye.

“Garrus,” she said coldly “He is a prisoner on this ship, and while he remains as such he will not be harmed. We are gonna go to Invictus, we’re gonna take down the Eclipse there and find out what the hell is going on here. You can piss and moan about it all you like but as long as you are on my ship you WILL follow my command.”

The two soldiers each stood their ground for what seemed like an eternity until Garrus finally took a step back. His expression remained hard and determined for a second before he spoke.

“So be it.” he said coldly and marched out the door without another word, leaving Shepard and Jack alone in the briefing room.

“Wow,” Jack said as the door closed. “He’s pissed.”

Shepard sighed and leaned back against the table, facing Jack. “What do you think Jack? You think he was lying?”

“Why you asking me?”

“I guess I’m having trouble seeing things clearly, too much history here.” She replied with a sigh. “So what do you think?”

“Fuck knows.” Jack said simply. “But no point killin’ him until we know what’s happening, he didn’t seem like some brainwashed robot-worshipper to me.”

“Yeah…” Shepard said, once again slipping back into her own thoughts until Jacob came back.

“Commander,” He said. “C-Sec have found the Ascalon and put a landlock on it pending investigation.”

“Thanks, Jacob.” Shepard said. “Joker, how we doing? We all set for departure?”

“Ummm … Yeah,” Joker sounded strangely nervous over the intercom, “Supplies are stored and ready.”

“Good,” Said Shepard, “Take us out.”

There was a pause before Joker spoke up again.

“Uhh … Commander, there may be a problem here.”

“What is it?”

Another pause.

“Garrus is gearing up, Commander. He’s at the airlock.”

Shepard gave a small glance at Jack, who shrugged, before she marched double-time out of the room, through the armoury and towards the cockpit. She marched past Wrex and Grunt who fell in behind her as she strode towards the airlock. Joker pointed with his thumb from the pilot’s chair as she approached, seeing the inner door open she marched right through it to find Garrus fully armed and armoured, checking the systems of his armoured suit.

“Going somewhere?” Shepard called, trying to keep her voice level. Garrus stopped whatever he was doing on his Omni-tool, taking a deep breath to steady himself before he turned to Shepard. To her surprise, she did not see anger in his eyes, but sadness.

“I’m going to find answers.”

“That’s where we’re going and it’s a days cruise so why are you in full gear?” Shepard knew the answer before he said it, and it brought a tear to her eye as he spoke the words.

“Because I’m not coming with you.” he said quietly. He sighed heavily and set his Viper sniper rifle against the wall. “Look, Shepard, I understand you can’t kill him outright but he IS setting you up, I know it. If you have to walk into whatever trap he has set before you see that then so be it, but don’t ask me to watch. When I find proof, I’m gonna come back and put a bullet where it belongs.”

The expression on his face broke Shepard’s heart as he turned away from her, picked up his rifle and pressed the control panel for the exterior door. As it slid open, Shepard’s restraint snapped and before she knew it, she had dashed forward and grabbed Garrus’ elbow.

“Please!” She blurted out before she could stop herself. For a moment she didn’t care that it was unprofessional, didn’t care that she should be stronger, she didn’t even care as she felt a tear slip from the corner of her eye. She had to make him stay, they had to stay together. “Don’t leave.”

For a second Garrus stood motionless before slowly turning to face Shepard, they had never stood so close before, except perhaps a few times crouched under cover in combat, but this felt completely different. His features softened slightly as he reached up and gently cupped her face, using his thumb to slowly wipe the tear from her cheek. Her heart soared as she rested her cheek in his gloved hand, feeling the warmth beneath the thick material.

“I’m sorry.”

Her eyes snapped open as she heard the words, she hadn’t even realised she had closed them. He met her confused gaze with the most pained expression she could imagine before he turned around and walked out of the Normandy, making his way down the docking corridor towards the Citadel, slotting his sniper rifle onto its magnetic holster on his back next to the Mattock heavy rifle on the other shoulder as he went. Shepard stood motionless as she watched her closest friend leave her.

* * *

 _Shit,_ Wrex thought as he watched from the airlock. He was too far away to hear what was being said, but he saw the shock ripple through Shepard’s body as Garrus turned away, he saw her knees twitch and hands begin to shake as he began walking away from the Normandy. He knew exactly what was going on; the little prick was going solo trying to find his own proof. It was a stupid idea if he was wrong and a fucking suicidal one if he was right. He weighed up his options for a moment before he let out a large sigh and glanced sideways to Grunt who stood beside him.

“The turian’s a slippery bastard, stay sharp.” He said, only drawing a small grunt of acknowledgment from the wall of armoured flesh beside him. He felt Grunt’s fist against his arm and turned to see him offering a handful of thermal clips.

“And keep her alive,” Wrex said as he took the clips from Grunt’s outstretched hand. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”

With that he marched out of the Normand towards Shepard, who still stood motionless as she watched Garrus walk away. As he entered her field of vision she slowly took her eyes off Garrus and looked at Wrex with a mix of pain and confusion.

“I got his back.” Wrex said as he marched straight past her and followed Garrus towards the citadel. Breaking into a jog, he caught up to Garrus just before they exited the gangway to the Citadel, falling into stride beside him without a word. He didn’t meet Garrus eyes when the turian looked at him.

“Thanks.” Garrus said after a few seconds of silence.

“Shut up.” Wrex replied as they passed through the doorway into the Citadel docks.


	5. The Parting

He had left her.

He had walked away. He hadn’t even looked back as he walked down the gangway, not a single glance. Shepard stood in the Normandy’s airlock chamber, frozen in disbelief. She found her emotions torn in two directions. On one hand, she felt a crushing fear that Garrus’ doubts were justified; if he was right about Saren then he was heading straight into the middle of an extremely dangerous investigation. On the other hand, she felt boiling anger building beneath her skin. He had left her, Wrex had known the risks and had gone after him to watch out for him. She suspected that he may have shared Garrus’ doubts, but it was Garrus who had left HER.

“Commander?” Joker’s voice echoed tentatively from the doorway, she barely even heard it. How could he leave her?

“Commander?” His voice, louder this time, shocked her out of her thoughts like a blast of ice cold water. She turned to see Joker looking at her expectantly as he leant against the doorframe. “What do we do?”

 _What do we do?_ thought Shepard, _What do I do?_

She felt herself close to panic as all the questions and doubts came flooding back into her mind, drowning out her logic. She couldn’t let herself panic, she had to stay calm. Steadying herself, she took a slow, deep breath to pull herself above the storm of questions and fear in her mind. She still had a job to do.

“Take us out, Joker.” She said as she turned and marched back onto the Normandy’s command deck, her face set in stone.

“But Wrex and Garrus – “

“Garrus is gone, Joker.” Shepard called sternly without looking back as she marched toward the elevator.

“They’ve got their mission,” Grunt rumbled from Joker’s side, “And we have ours.”

* * *

Wrex stood silently against an advertising board a few metres behind Garrus as the turian argued furiously with the C-Sec guard at the Zakera Ward security checkpoint. Without Shepard and her Spectre status, Garrus was having a great deal of difficulty convincing the guard to allow himself and Wrex access to the Citadel whilst armed to the teeth and in full combat armour. Wrex had to give due credit, the turian had impressive discipline. Had Wrex been the one talking to the guard, he would have shot someone by now, but even as emotionally high-strung as he was at the moment, Garrus was still showing an amazing amount of restraint. After a few more minutes of arguing, he finally walked back towards Wrex as the guard, looking considerably nervous and flustered, spoke into his headset.

“So what’s your genius plan, turian?” Wrex said as Garrus leant against the other side of the freestanding advertising board.

“Start at the hitmen from Chora’s Den and work our way up the food chain until we find a link to Saren.”

“That simple?” Wrex asked sceptically.

“That simple.”

Wrex looked over at Garrus. Despite his relaxed posture, his face was taught and emotionless: his mandibles were locked rigidly against his jaw and his eyes were fixed upon the doors to which they were being denied access. Wrex wasn’t sure whether the turian fully understood the shit storm he would be walking into if his hunch about Saren turned out to be right.

“They’ll have covered their tracks, Garrus.” He said seriously. “We’re gonna have to go through a lot of people to find answers.”

Garrus turned to face Wrex for the first time since they had left the Normandy. It was a purposeful, unrelenting stare which Wrex had seen before on other men and knew exactly what it meant: no compromise, no compassion, no mercy.

“Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.” He said flatly.

 _Yeah,_ Wrex thought, _this is gonna be my kind of job._

“Sir?” the guard called from the desk, “Captain Bailey will see you in the station now.”

“Shall we?” Wrex said with a smirk as they made their way toward the C-Sec station.

* * *

Bailey was at his usual desk inside the Citadel Security office, looking stressed and tired as usual. As he saw the turian and the krogan walk through the doors to the station, he waved away the officer that stood beside him, explaining something that Garrus could not hear but evidently trivial to Bailey.

“Garrus Vakarian” he said as Garrus approached his desk, his voice was a very purposeful blend of authority and civility. A poker player’s voice. Garrus couldn’t be sure how much he already knew about what had happened earlier, but decided to feign ignorance.

“Captain Bailey, we were wondering what you could tell us about this morning’s shootout in Chora’s Den.” Garrus said in his most polite, ass-kissing voice that made his skin crawl. “Did anything about it strike you as unusual?”

Bailey, obviously not taken in by Garrus’ attempt at a political approach, stared daggers over his terminal screen as he considered the question.

“Unusual?” He said bitterly. “You know I oughtta throw you both in the lock-up and ask you that exact same question. Witnesses have confirmed the participation of a quarian female and a redheaded human woman in the shooting; as well as a drell chasing one of the shooters through the streets. And as far as your bi-pedal battering ram over here, the barstaff have mentioned him by name as being a key shooter before he tore down half of the goddamn market!!”

Bailey was fuming as he slammed his fist against the table as his rant escalated.

“Then all the surveillance footage is filtered, copied and wiped from our files by some mystery AI programme before the situation could even be investigated. So why don’t you tell me what YOU know about what the hell happened this morning!”

Garrus thought for a second. Bailey was a good cop in a bad position, much like Garrus when he was a C-Sec officer; headstrong and idealistic. However, the more people who knew exactly what was going on increased the chances of whoever hired the mercs in the first place getting word of Garrus’ investigation and going to ground. If that happened then he would have almost no chance of linking anything back to Saren. He would have to be careful with Bailey.

“That is Spectre business.”

“Except you aren’t a Spectre, Vakarian, and neither is your friend!” Bailey continued. “And without Shepard you fall under MY jurisdiction. Now you better start telling me what the hell is going on in my ward before I haul you both in for destruction of property, disturbing the peace and murder!”

“Easy, human.” Wrex said threateningly, his hand dropping to the pistol at his hip. “We’re in a hurry, and we WILL. NOT. BE. DELAYED.”

Bailey hesitated for a second before taking a glance around the rest of the room and slipping his left hand beneath his desk, gripping something that Garrus couldn’t see.

“There are over thirty guards in this building,” he said sternly. “You think you can kill us all ... and make it off this station alive?”

“If you pull that shotgun, we WILL find out.”

Garrus, feeling the tension between the two men growing dangerously close to the point of ignition, stepped between the two of them and cleared his throat loudly.

“We’re getting very close to doing something crazy here so both of you calm down.”

Garrus’ words, alaong with the prospect of immediate violence, seemed to outweigh Bailey’s anger enough for him to release his hold on the gun behind his desk. He moved his eyes from Wrex to Garrus and they softened slightly from the fury they had been showing.

“Garrus, you know I’m on your side but I have a job to do. I got five dead criminals, a phantom corpse that I can’t ID, a market that’s been ripped apart and no security footage. The ONLY things I do have are a dozen witnesses that put your team in that shootout. I know these guys were scum and if I could leave you to your business I would but I got the brass breathin’ down my neck for answers. Now I can get ‘em off my back but I need something to feed ‘em. Either give me an ID on the sixth body, the A.I. security hack or a location and ID of the Turian that your guys were chasing, but you gotta give me something.”

Garrus took a pause as he considered Bailey. The man was an idealist at heart and had proven himself trustworthy in the past, but Garrus still couldn’t risk telling him everything. He had to be careful exactly how much information he let Bailey get. He leaned over the desk, putting himself closer to Bailey so that they could speak in lower voices.

“It was a failed hit on Shepard. Seven shooters.” He said finally.

“She ok?” Bailey asked.

“For now.”

“That’s good.” Bailey sighed sincerely. “So, what about the seventh shooter?”

“He got away.” Garrus didn’t flinch as he lied. “Made it to the skyway.”

“Shit. What about my security feeds? With them I could get an ID and put out a warrant.”

Garrus thought for a second, a shipboard A.I. was hugely illegal in Citadel space, and he doubted that even Bailey would let E.D.I.’s existence remain unchallenged.

“I don’t know,” he said simply “The hitters trying to stop you doing exactly that, perhaps.”

Bailey studied Garrus for a long moment, seemingly unsure whether to believe the former C-Sec agent.

“Must be some serious money behind this if they have an A.I. covering their tracks.”

“That’s what we’re looking to find out.” Garrus replied, “Which is why we need to know about that mystery body, the unidentified shooter.”

“The turian?” Bailey scoffed. “We got nothing: no known ID, no priors, not a goddamn thing. He had military grade equipment and a state-of-the-art omni-tool.”

“Were you able to get anything from the omni-tool?”

“Nope, memory core wiped clean a couple minutes before the shooting. Leaves us with nothing to get from it”

“Shotgun blast to the chest and a lot of scars?” Wrex asked, receiving an affirmative nod from Bailey. “Yeah, I got him. He was the top dog, he gave the orders. Carried a top-of-the-line shotgun with military issue modifications; expensive stuff.”

“What have you got on the others?” Garrus asked.

“Run of the mill scumbags. All with known ties to Eclipse. All seem to be pretty low level; couple were security grunts on smuggling runs, the rest were debt collectors, enforcers and muscle-men.”

Garrus took a second to think about everything they knew. It wasn’t much.

“We need to see the bodies.” He said finally.

“Garrus, you aren’t a cop anymore.” Bailey said cautiously “I shouldn’t even be discussing this with you.”

“Come on, Bailey.” Garrus said, his voice becoming strained as he tried to control his frustration. “We need something more. Whoever hired these guys is still out there and I need to find them before they try again, Shepard won’t get so lucky twice. Just give me ten minutes.”

Bailey sighed heavily, no doubt weighing his need for answers against the potential consequences of letting unauthorised personnel access to evidence in a criminal investigation. After a long moment he motioned his head towards the elevator.

“Morgue is two floors down. I figure that after this morning’s security breach our systems need a complete shutdown, purge and reboot to destroy any undetected malware that the A.I. left behind.” Bailey spoke slowly and purposefully as he typed commands into his terminal. “So the security in this building is gonna be down for exactly seventeen minutes. After that the building WILL go into full lockdown while security is re-established and confirmed.”

“Thanks.” Garrus said.

“For what?” Bailey replied with a sly grin on his face. He took his access card and swiped it in front of his terminal, which flashed blue as the security systems deactivated. He then placed his card on the desk close to Garrus, gave a respectful nod and walked away.

“Come on.” Garrus said to Wrex as he picked up Bailey’s access card and made his way to the elevator.

* * *

Shepard had never understood the logic of putting the brig on the engineering deck of a ship. She had even written a report to Alliance command early in her career recommending the brig to be constructed closer to the crew quarters in small sized frigates, which had been ignored. The Normandy was constructed, as most ships of its size were, with the brig in the traditional place, engineering. A ship of the Normandy’s size had little enough space as it was, and for a facility that was seldom used the military thought it far better to take the space from the ample storage facilities rather than the already cramped crew quarters.

As the door to the brig hissed open, however, her old doubts resurfaced as she contemplated her prisoner.

Saren sat calmly on the bench that doubles as a bed – barely. His hands were cuffed in his lap as well as his ankles being secured to a bolt in the floor. Despite the restraints and the knowledge that this was the most secure room on the entire ship: with an instant lockdown if any shipboard alarms were sounded, Shepard was still nervous. She didn’t like him being so close to the engineering level.

He met her gaze confidently as she entered the room, giving a curt nod to Tali who was working on her omni-tool at Saren’s side. As her eyes met Saren’s again, his mandibles twitched into a smile which sent a ripple of anger through her veins. He was the reason Garrus had left. Whether he was an enemy or not, she hated him for that fact alone.

After a moment, Tali stood and approached Shepard.

“What have you got, Tali?” Shepard asked without taking her eyes off Saren.

“Not much.” Tali said, frustration evident in her voice. “Apart from basic operating systems the omni-tool is pretty empty. Some intercepted transmissions between what I think are the Chora’s Den mercenaries. Nothing really useful, though. He has detailed information on the Invictus base but nothing to link either himself or the mercenaries directly to it. Other than that, its empty.”

“Thanks, Tali.” Shepard said “You go get cleaned up, there’s blood on your suit. I want one of the team watching him at all times. Four hour shifts.”

“Of course.” Tali agreed as she left the room. “I’ll send for Grunt.”

Hearing Tali’s footsteps receding down the hallway towards Grunt’s room, Shepard once again focused on Saren who had remained silent and still through the entire conversation.

“If we don’t find anything on Invictus that makes me think that you’re lying,” she said seriously “I’ll bury you out there.”

Saren held her gaze for a moment before answering.

“Understood, Shepard.”

* * *

“Nothing on this one but another Eclipse tattoo.” Garrus said as he covered the body of another of the mercenaries. “What about yours?”

“Same tattoo and a pitifully small dick.” Wrex called back “But he’s human, so that’s normal.”

Garrus couldn’t help the smile that forced its way onto his face as Wrex threw the sheet haphazardly over the body. He glanced at the time that was displayed on the heads-up display on his visor. They didn’t have long left before the building’s security systems reactivated and they hadn’t found anything of use among any of the bodies or the collected belongings.

As Wrex moved to the final body on his side of the room, Garrus approached the sixth and final corpse. As he pulled the sheet down, his eyes were instantly drawn to the dramatic scars on the turian’s face. This had to be the unidentified body. Looking in the tray of belongings, Garrus wasn’t surprised to find it mostly empty, the patrons of Chora’s Den would have stripped the body of anything valuable before it had gone cold. Unfortunately there were no weapons to inspect; they would have been the first things to get taken thanks to the huge market for ghost weapons on the Citadel. A gun that is registered to a dead man could be sold for twice its value in any side alley on the station. There was only a simple necklace that sported a large, vicious looking tooth that Garrus couldn’t identify, an omni-tool and a credit chit.

“You recognise this?” Garrus asked as he threw the necklace to Wrex who caught it in midday an studied it.

“Thresher maw,” he said casually “a bull ... big bastard.”

Turning back to the tray, Garrus scanned the omni-tool with his own, again unsurprised to find the memory had been completely erased shortly before the hit in Chora’s Den. Frustration boiling over, Garrus angrily swept the tray off the table, scattering the contents across the floor as he moved back to body. Immediately his eyes were fixed to the face.

“Wrex,” he called across the room, pausing when his eyes turned to see Wrex. “Put him down.”

Wrex, who now had the body of a salarian sat upright as he checked the back of body, looked confused and irritated by Garrus’ indignation. He grabbed the salarian corpse by the mouth and turned the face to face him.

“Do you have a problem with this?” Wrex asked the lifeless corpse before forcibly shaking the head like a puppet. He then turned back to Garrus. “He doesn’t mind.”

Garrus could only shake his head.

“Well come see this.”

Wrex pushed his salarian puppet away without regard, resulting in the body falling limply from the table into a heap on the floor. Wrex didn’t care, a dead body was nothing more than exactly that, a body. He held as much respect for a dead man as he did when that same man was alive, but once someone was dead then their body is just a lifeless piece of meat. He respected the memories of the warriors that had earned it, not the rotting sacks of flesh they left behind.

“This was the unidentified mercenary from the Den,” Garrus said, obviously choosing to ignore the body heaped upon the floor for now. “Notice anything strange?”

Wrex approached the body, looking confused.

“The facial tattoos.” Garrus continued, “Turian facial tattoos represent your home planet, where you were born. Each world has a different tattoo design.”

“Hang on,” Wrex interrupted, confused “Saren doesn’t have any tattoos.”

“He was born on a ship,” Garrus explained, “So he has no home planet.”

“Okay,” Wrex said impatiently, “So what’s special about this guy?”

“He’s from Palevan.” Garrus said, sounding perplexed, “Palevan authorities register all newborns and take DNA samples at birth. So why couldn’t he be identified, it should have been easy. The records must have been erased.”

“No Eclipse mark either.” Wrex pointed out, “all the others have Eclipse markings: tattoos on the humans and salarians, armour etchings on the turian.”

Garrus thought for a moment. As he thought of all the pieces of the puzzle in his mind, a possibility suddenly came to mind and Garrus felt his spirits lift slightly.

“We’re done here, let’s go.” He said as he covered the body with the sheet. He nodded towards the salarian body still lying on the floor. “You going to pick that up?”

“He still doesn’t mind.” Wrex replied flatly. “What’s our next play?”

As they entered the elevator, Garrus’ mind was a storm of different thoughts: he had to make his next move carefully.

“We’re going back to Chora’s Den.”


	6. The Wardogs

Jack had grown quite fond of her little cubby hole on the engineering deck of the Normandy that she had converted into her own private living quarters. She loved the sound of the ship’s systems thrumming and hissing around her. Despite the knowledge that she was surrounded by pipes pumping thousands of litres of highly explosive materials, she couldn’t help but love feeling the strength of the ship around her, the power. It was intoxicating, so much raw energy around her made her feel more powerful, as if it was infecting her. She also liked the fact that nobody seemed to be too eager to bother her down here. Apart from one or two crewmembers that she had invited down to blow off some steam from time to time, she had the area to herself twenty-four seven. Well, except for Shepard’s visits, she came down to Jack’s quarters constantly: checking up on her, talking about “feelings” and “friendship” and all that sentimental crap, never for the good stuff.

 _And damn,_ Jack thought, _I really want the good stuff from her._

Shepard had that perfect combination of sass and sweetness: that sanctimonious crusader for justice that made Jack want to fuck her senseless, and the bad-ass bitch soldier inside to make it all different kinds of fun.

But alas, Jack had never been able to get under her skin (or her clothes) in that way. She knew that Shepard had swung that way in the past, but that was with an asari ... a hot asari scientist. EVERYONE swings that way. Unfortunately she had never shown that sort of interest towards Jack which of course made Jack want her all the more at first, but she eventually got used to it. By the time they had hit the Collector base, Jack had more or less accepted the fact that she would probably never get the chance to get in Shepard’s pants ... well, she would never say “never”, there was always alcohol to try. She was even starting to enjoy her little routine visits.

 _Shit,_ Jack thought, _I’m going soft._

It was true. After the Collector base Jack no longer had a reason to stay on the Normandy: her deal with Shepard was done and after nuking the biotic training facility on Pragia she had no further use for Cerberus. Still, she found herself convincing herself to stick around, she felt comfortable here. Hell, she might even go so far as to call one or two of the crew her friends, including Shepard.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she heard the intercom speakers hiss to life before Tali’s voice rang throughout the small space.

“Jack,” the Quarians voice echoed “It’s your shift with the prisoner.”

This brought a smile to Jack’s face. She had been waiting to get some time alone with Saren; the turian intrigued her. She could understand Garrus being trigger-happy around him; that man was wound up so tight he could eat nails and shit corkscrews. Everyone on the ship had heard what he and the crew of the first Normandy had been through to bring Saren to justice and she couldn’t blame Garrus for wanting to simply put a slug in his skull the minute he reappeared, but Jack would never have believed that there was anything in the galaxy that could make Garrus leave the ship, leave Shepard.

It was blindingly obvious to Jack that those two should have been fucking each other months ago but they both seemed too focused on their jobs to realise their own feelings. For Garrus to strike out solo from the ship and leave Shepard to fend for herself? He must’ve been really desperate to prove that Saren was crooked. Especially since he didn’t trust anyone else to protect her; the whole crew knew that if Garrus was left behind when Shepard went shore-side then he was not going to be particularly pleasant company until she got back safely.

As Jack made her way towards the brig she was surprised to find herself getting nervous. She was Subject Zero, she didn’t fear anyone and absolutely everyone feared her. However, even she couldn’t ignore what she had heard of Saren’s history. He had been the most successful (not to mention the most ruthless) Spectre in the council’s history before he had become the most wanted and most dangerous threat to the entire galaxy. There were whole planetary governments that had grown to fear him, and that reputation was earned solely from Saren’s known deeds. She doubted that anyone in the galaxy knew details of his countless covert operations and “extra-curricular” activities.

Her nerves were suddenly replaced by confusion as the door to the brig hissed open to reveal not the straight-faced, stone silent prisoner she had seen upstairs but the last thing that she could have expected: Saren leaning forward, casually chatting to Thane about hand to hand combat.

“I must say I was impressed by your cognitive ability.” Thane said respectfully. “Your reactions were unusually fast and your strategy – adaptive and unpredictable.”

“It wasn’t my first time fighting a drell. Your eidetic memories require an opponent to act unpredictably. But your speed and balance were incredible, even when you started to get fatigued ... Keprals?”

“Yes.” Thane said, a hint of sadness in his voice.

“My sympathies.”

Jack couldn’t believe it; twelve hours ago these two men were trying to kill each other, and both still bore the injuries they had inflicted upon each other. Yet here they sat chatting like friends in a bar.

“Hey!” Jack interrupted, turning to Thane as he stood from his seat. “You makin’ friends?”

Thane looked from Jack to the still shackled and seated Saren for a moment before turning back to her.

“His loyalties have yet to be determined,” He said, “But conversation passes the time, I have grown to enjoy such conversation.”

“Didn’t figure you for the conversational type ... Mr lone assassin.”

“It is a ... recent development.”

“Well your shift is done, I’ll take him for the next one.”

“Thank you, I should rest.” Thane said as he walked stiffly out of the brig. “Do you require anything?”

“Food,” Jack said enthusiastically, “The decent stuff, though. None of that protein mix shit.”

“Very well.” Thane said politely.

“Thanks.” Jack mumbled almost inaudibly, she fucking HATED saying that word. She took her seat as the door closed and turned her attention to Saren, who was now staring at the wall, his mood apparently sullied by his new guard.

 _Sexist pig,_ she thought, _all these turian military bastards are the same._

“What, no chit-chat for me?” She said sarcastically, receiving only a muted scoff in response. “You better get used to female baby-sitters, half of the crew on this junker are chicks and you’re gonna have to work with them.”

“Your sex is not what offends me ... human.” Saren spat, venom in every word.

“Ah, yeah. You hate humans.” Jack said, suddenly remembering the rumours she had heard flying around the mess hall. “That’s OK, I don’t like ‘em either.”

“You ARE human.” Saren said, confusion creeping into his voice.

“Fuck that.” Jack replied, smiling before her face turned more serious. “Humans kidnapped me, experimented on me and tortured me into a fucking biotic weapon for half my life. I don’t have any more love for humans than for any other race in this fucked up galaxy, I look out for myself.”

She sat back, rested her head against the wall behind her, feigning disinterest while she waited for a response. Five seconds. Ten. From the corner of her eye she saw Saren relax forward and rest his elbows on his knees, obviously completely uncaring of anything she said. She resigned herself to silence and cursed her luck for being put on guard duty.

“They experimented on you?” Saren’s voice cut the silence with something different in his voice, something that Jack couldn’t quite place. Was it pity? Sadness? Looking at him directly she could now see that he was staring not at her, but rather through her into the distance, his attention seemingly lost in a faraway thought or memory.

“Yeah.” Jack said slowly. She waited through another long silence as his gaze fell to the floor at his feet.

“When I was young I was in the Turian military academy with my brother. He wanted to be a fleet pilot; he had always wanted to fly. But he entered the elite infantry corps with me ... he wanted to keep me safe, he always thought I was too impetuous for my own good. We were on our first tour of duty when our fleet that caught the first human explorers trying to reactivate the 314 relay. We didn’t have much to do with the initial mid-space skirmishes, but afterwards the fleet sent scouting contingents onto every nearby terrestrial planet to search for any other human incursions and negotiate their eviction from the system. Our unit was sent to Akuze, tropical hell hole. We found a mid-strength human military and scientific contingent, about twice our number. My squad were assigned as security escort to the first contact team, but the humans were too scared ... cowards. They opened fire on us before our negotiator could even open his mouth. We had to fight our way out of their compound ... lost a lot of men.

“My brother, though, he wasn’t so lucky. We were both caught by a stun grenade outside their perimeter, blew me into a patch of shrubbery and knocked him unconscious. I watched as they dragged my brother onto a transport skiff. They took at least three others alive, those of my unit that were left followed the shuttle on foot using one of our men’s emergency locators. It took us two days to find their secondary compound. We didn’t have the numbers for a full assault so we went in quietly that night to get our men out, including my brother.”

Jack didn’t make a sound. She didn’t know why he was telling her this, hell she wasn’t even sure if he realised he was saying this out loud, but she wasn’t going to interrupt. She waited as the silence stretched out, he sat motionless, still staring through the floor beneath him. She started to think that he was not going to continue before his voice cut the air again, barely more than a whisper.

“There was nothing left to rescue,” he said “The humans wanted to know their enemy, want to know how best to kill us. The bodies of our comrades had been dissected like lab animals and then burned like garbage. The ones they took alive: they suffered even worse. They had locked them in separate cells and tested them in extreme heat, cold ... poison gas. They kept them alive long enough for them to complete their experiments. My brother died alone and in agony at the hands of cowardly human scientists. I found the video logs of him screaming as they flooded the room with radiation and watched as he was cooked from the inside. Then they wheeled his corpse to the incinerator and burned his body.

“My team pulled out, there was nobody left alive to rescue. I stayed behind ... and I slaughtered every living thing in that base, shot every last one of them. It was a kindness compared to what they deserved.

“The council swept the whole incident into classified files: they needed a peaceful solution. The humans were never made to account for what they had done to our men, to my brother. The next week, the council selected me for Spectre training and removed me from my unit.”

“Shit.” Jack whispered incredulously. Saren, shaken from the memory, locked eyes with Jack for the first time since she had entered the room. She a saw a pure, unbridled hatred burning in his eyes.

“Humans are cruel and savage by nature.” He spat “They don’t deserve a seat on the council. They would be quarantined into their own solar system for the rest of time if I had my way.”

“So...” she began hesitantly, “why are you helping us?”

“’The enemy of my enemy...’” he said “Shepard knows that the Reapers are coming and intends to stop them. For now, that makes her my ally.”

The silence that followed was one of the most uncomfortable that she could remember enduring in her life. She jumped in her seat like a startled schoolgirl when the door hissed open beside her. A young crewman stood nervously holding a tray of food which Jack snatched from his hands angrily, pissed off that she had been so startled. She dove into her food vigorously, filling her mouth as an excuse for the lingering silence and avoiding Saren’s eyes that she could feel silently burning into her.

This was going to be a VERY long shift ... Fuck

* * *

Garrus had always been amazed how quickly Chora’s Den could clean up after a shootout. He doubted that they had even stopped serving drinks. To be fair, they had had a great deal of practise at it: there had been over a dozen “incidents” in Chora’s Den in his final year at C-Sec, and those were only the cases that were officially reported. He could imagine that there were more than a few incidents that people had paid good money to keep under wraps.

As the doors to the Den opened, Garrus found exactly what he had expected: business as usual. There was no sign of the fatal shootout that was merely a hiccup to this morning’s business. The bartenders looked as bored as usual as they kept up with the relaxed pace of the evening, the asari dancers gyrated on table tops and above the bar and the customers drank and laughed oblivious to the morning’s disturbances. Garrus, however, ignored them all. He was looking for someone in particular, whom he found at the usual table along the back wall, sipping at the bright blue drink in his hand.

“Garrus Vakarian,” the turian said pleasantly. “It’s been a long time. Sit down, have a drink.”

“General.” Garrus replied respectfully as he sat on the opposite side of the table.

“Ah, finally a young man who still respects us old wardogs. You’ve been a busy man since we last met.”

Garrus smiled wryly. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Septimus. I’ve just been minding my own business, despite whatever you’ve heard. To be honest I’m surprised a former general was even listening to stories about me at all.”

“Such modesty.” The general laughed. “I must admit I would have paid much more attention to you when we met three years ago had I known that you and Shepard were going after Saren. However, after the battle of the Citadel, I started keeping an eye on you. Spectre training, going vigilante then disappearing into the Terminus Systems only to come back on a ghost ship following a dead commander: quite impressive.”

“Thank you, sir.” Garrus wasn’t quite sure why the general was being so talkative but decided to let the warm welcome play out.

“So, where is Shepard?” Septimus asked as he scanned the room casually.

“We ... parted ways.” Garrus said, trying not to sound uncomfortable “Temporarily. It’s just me.”

“Do you mean it’s just you and the Krogan you left by the door.” He said smugly, smiling as he saw Garrus flinch as he realised he had been caught in a lie. “I’m old and I’m drunk, Garrus. I’m not dead.”

Garrus smiled at the comment as he tried to lead the conversation back on track.

“I have a feeling this conversation is leading to a point ...” Garrus probed.

Septimus’s face became slightly more serious as he took another drink before answering.

“My point is, Garrus” He began slowly, “That you are a busy man; a man who doesn’t waste his time with friendly drinks with old wardogs like me. So the fact that you are sitting at my table means that you want something from me. I don’t mean to be rude when I say that I would rather get back to the company of the delightful drink in my hand so why don’t we get to why you are here. We’re soldiers, you and I, let’s not play politics.”

“Fair enough.” Garrus said, relieved to be free of pretences for once. “I’m looking for information.”

“Information about who?”

“Who indeed. I need an ID and history on a mercenary who was killed this morning trying to kill Shepard.”

“Sounds like C-Sec matter, why come to me?”

Garrus paused.

“I think he was a Black Talon.”

The general froze, his drink raised halfway to his mouth as he stared disbelievingly at Garrus.

“What leads you to think-“

“Obvious military background: he was the lead shooter, had military equipment and weapon modifications, state of the art omni-tool and C-Sec couldn’t identify him even though he’s Palevan born. Now if he’s Palevan born that means he would be 4th fleet ... your fleet. Missing I.D. records mean covert ops: Black Talons.”

“Garrus,” Septimus put his drink down and leaned in close to speak more quietly “The Black Talons are the most covert section of the 4th fleet. Every single one of those men is a hero. If you expect me to betray any of them to you just because you did me a favour a long time ago, you must be either stupid or crazy. Either way, I think it’s time you were on your way.”

Septimus made a motion with his left hand, signalling to the bodyguard who followed him discreetly at all times and who would have been waiting for such a signal since Garrus had approached the general. After a few seconds of waiting, the general saw a smug smile creep into Garrus’ features. Risking a glance over his shoulder to his guard’s table, his heart skipped a beat and his blood turned cold as he saw the turian slumped unconsciously against the table, seemingly passed out drunk to any passer-by. The huge armoured form of a krogan sat across from Septimus’ guard, raising his glass and smiling cruelly as he saw the general look over.

His eyes were drawn back to his own table as he heard the all-too familiar sound of a weapon powering up. Turning back, he saw Garrus give a nod to the Krogan as he pointed a pistol at Septimus under the table.

“Be careful, Garrus.” The general warned, his voice conveying a great deal more confidence than he felt. “You are playing a very dangerous game.”

“So are you.” Garrus replied unflinchingly. “You think I believe that you kept an eye on me out of mere curiosity? You wanted to see just how much I had found out on Omega, exactly how much I knew.” He saw the general’s eyes flash towards the door, he was nervous. “Well, let me tell you EXACTLY how much I know. I know that the 4th fleet smuggling operation was started under your command just before you retired. I know that you still run the operation and I know that you move more narcotics and illegal mods through Omega than half of the gangs: half of everything illegal that the 4th fleet impounds coming into citadel space gets turned straight back around by your men and sold back into the Terminus systems. You know who I was on Omega; you think because you don’t traffic guns or hire out muscle that I wouldn’t notice? Now, you get me every piece of intel you have on this scumbag and whoever hired him or I swear I will go to war on your entire operation: I’ll burn every shipment and kill every distributor you have, I will tear apart every illegal deal you try to make in the galaxy. Then I’ll send enough evidence to the hierarchy to burn your entire life to the ground. All those years of service, your precious reputation will be swept away, forgotten ... and your pension, erased. All of your political contacts that you wine and dine with every week will cut you off. You’ll be a pariah, Septimus. And just when you think you’ve lost everything you can stand to lose: your money, your friends, your reputation ... I’m going to come back and blow out both your legs, and put you in a chair for the rest of your life: a crippled, disgraced old man.”

The general sat in silence as the image sank in. Garrus knew he had struck the right nerve: Septimus was a military man to the bone, the thing he valued most was the respect he had earned from others. He let him have the time to imagine the full weight of the life that Garrus had promised to give him and weigh his options. After a minute or so, he saw the General’s muscles sag slightly in defeat.

“What do I have to go on?” he asked weakly, a hint of bitterness in his voice. Garrus relaxed slightly.

“Palevan born as I said, middle aged, lots of facial scarring – lacerations, probably another turian. He carried a thresher maw tooth round his neck and my partner tell me he favoured a scimitar shotgun with an E.M. spread condenser and a turian fleet issue combat sight.”

The general nodded, it was enough information and Garrus knew it. The Black Talons were the covert special force of the 4th Fleet. Their very existence was denied if captured, all identification was destroyed upon their induction into the unit. Their numbers were small and dropouts were rare. To find out which one had such traits and possessions would be a simple task for Septimus, who was one of the few people who had enough influence within the fleet to access their records.

“You have eighteen hours, come to the Binary Helix docks tomorrow morning.” Garrus said as he holstered his pistol, stood up and walked away, followed by the krogan a few seconds later who finished his drink as he left. Septimus slumped back in his chair, sullen and angry as he gulped back the remains of his drink and ordered another.

* * *

Wrex caught up to Garrus as he neared the skyway.

“Whoever hired these guys did so off-station.” Wrex said. “We’re gonna need a ship if we’re gonna go after ‘em.”

“What a coincidence,” Garrus said with a smile. “I happened to hear of a very fine ship being impounded by C-Sec just this afternoon. Meet me in the Binary Helix docks early tomorrow, we’ll have a ship.”


	7. The Shadows

“Shepard,” Joker’s voice crackled through her comms unit “I’ve got their eyes on the skies, dropping you into the canyon and shutting down non-essential systems in thirty seconds, you’ll be touching down on the south side of the base in 5 minutes. Good luck, Commander.”

As Shepard’s comm. unit clicked over to silence, the interior lights in the shuttle went out and the entire craft lurched as the autopilot dove into the canyons of the Invictus desert.

“We’ve gone dark, team. We’ll be touching down in five minutes.” Shepard called out to the rest of her team as she brought up a three-dimensional holographic scan of the Eclipse base from her omni-tool. “The base is big ... it looks to be a major spice smuggling and training operation, probably a centre of operations for the whole sector. The main complex has a battery of heavy turrets that could knock the Normandy right out of the sky so Joker’s staying away but he's staying within sensor range to keep their scanning equipment on the sky while we use the canyons to slip in under the cover of the storm.”

“A base that size with that kind of artillery can’t go unnoticed in the middle of the desert, the Eclipse must be paying off the local authorities. There’s gotta be serious credits coming out of this operation.” Jacob said as he loaded thermal clips into the shotgun that lay on his knee.

“Which probably comes from whatever they are smuggling. We’ll be touching down here,” said Shepard as she pointed at the orange miniature projected from her wrist. “five hundred metres south of the main complex, on the edge of this container field.”

“Those are all shipping containers?” Tali asked incredulously. “that must be millions of credits of spice in there.”

"Hundreds of millions." Jacob corrected.

"Their smuggling is of no importance to us,” Miranda cut in from the far end of the bench. “What’s important is to find out whether this bastard is lying or not.” She said as she gestured towards Saren, who sat silently in handcuffs beside her.

“Exactly,” Shepard continued “which is why we’re going to go in as quietly as possible and hit the command centre ONLY. From the looks of it the C.C. is this building in the centre of the compound. Miranda and Jacob, you two stay with the shuttle, make sure we don’t have any unwelcome visitors. I’ll take Saren to breach the control centre. Tali, I’ll need you to hack into their mainframe as fast as possible and download as much data as you can.”

“Very well, Shepard.”

“Jack ... JACK!!” Shepard shouted, startling the tattooed biotic from where she was sleeping in her seat. “Wake up, I’ll need your destructive talents to breach the command centre.”

“Fuckin’ aye.”

“The problem..." Shepard continued "is this structure here on the north end of the compound, a hundred metres from the command centre. It looks to be some sort of barracks. If it goes loud at any point then we’re gonna have that building pouring a lot of hurt in our direction.”

“How much hurt?” Grunt asked.

“The Normandy can’t get close enough for thermal scans so we don’t know. Could be room for fifty, could be two hundred. So ... Grunt and Thane, I want you to bypass the main complex on the west side, set up overwatch between the barracks and the command centre and keep them pinned down if things get hairy.”

Thane, his chest still bandaged from his previous injuries, merely nodded as he attached his pistol to the magnetic holster on his belt. Grunt had a sadistic smirk on his face at the prospect of the possibility of a heavy firefight.

“The base is currently being hit by a major rainstorm which should cover the sound of our approach. There’ll probably be guards patrolling the cargo yard but only engage if absolutely necessary, we can't have a firefight breaking out before we hit the control centre, we’ll be overrun before we even get there. So Grunt, keep that shotgun holstered.”

She ignored the childlike look of disappointment on Grunt’s face as a red light illuminated the cabin.

“One minute till touchdown,” She called out, “Any questions?”

“Yeah,” Jack said as she motioned towards Saren “Why did we not leave him in his cell?”

“Because we don’t know what we’re gonna find in there. If his story is true, he’s our best source of intel.”

“Of course, that’s only half of the truth.” Saren said from the corner, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Shepard doesn’t trust me to be left alone on the Normandy ... even in chains.”

Shepard didn’t answer as the shuttle threw itself into a series of violent lurches as it shot out of the canyon, remaining within a few metres of the desert landscape to avoid any Eclipse air-defense systems.

“Ten seconds!” Shepard yelled as she stood by the door, support bar in one hand, assault rifle in the other. The other members of the squad readied their weapons as the shuttle swung round, setting with a thankfully gentle thud before the door hissed open and Shepard surged through.

She was instantly hit by a wall of freezing rain that was like being plunged into an ice bath. The torrent was so heavy that it instantly soaked her hair and seeped into the padded underlayers of her armour. Ignoring the cold, she scouted the landing area through the sight on her Mattock assault rifle. They had landed in a stretch of empty space between the outer perimeter wall and the cargo field. A loading area by the looks of it. She saw no guards as she scanned her rifle scope from side to side. The rain was so heavy that she could barely see the first row of containers only twenty yards in front of her. She could hear the rest of her team over the sound of the storm, jumping out of the shuttle, weapons ready, each covering a different sector of fire.

“Clear front.” She called when she was satisfied that there were no guards in sight.

“Clear left.” Tali replied.

“Clear right.” Jacob’s voice.

“Clear six.” Came Thane’s voice from around the side of the shuttle.

“All clear.” Shepard said, looking back towards the shuttle. “Saren.”

As Saren stood and casually hopped from the shuttle into the pouring rain, Shepard approached Tali.

“You stay a few yards behind us,” she said, glancing at Saren. “He tries to run, you shoot. No questions.”

Tali gave a confident nod before Shepard looked around the group, searching for the one man she couldn’t see.

“Where’s Thane?” she called to the group before almost jumping out of her skin as he materialised from the shadows of the shuttle. She gave herself a mental slap at how jumpy she was before she spoke to him.

“It’s scary how easily you do that.” She said jokingly before her face turned serious. “If this turns into a firefight you and Grunt are gonna get a lot of heat. I only need TIME from you and not much of it. You give ‘em hell and FALL BACK. This is not a death or glory mission so you get your asses outta there ... understood?”

“Perfectly, Shepard.” He replied.

“Ok,” She said as she patted him on the shoulder. “Move out, fast and quiet. Miranda, Jacob, keep a sharp eye.”

With that she took off towards the row of containers, rifle at the ready with her team following behind her. Reaching the containers, she pressed herself against the side of a one roughly in the middle of the row, just shy of the corner. Jack arrived a second later on the other opposite side of the gap. Shepard gave a final glance around at her team. Jacob and Miranda had already taken up position around the shuttle. Saren was stood casually behind her, looking far too content for Shepard’s liking while Tali stood ready behind him, shotgun in hand. Looking past them, she saw Thane and Grunt approach the far end of the row, only ghostly figures through the thick torrent of thundering rain

“Have fun, boys.” Jack said quietly over the comm. system.

Shepard looked back towards Jack, gave a small nod, and rounded the corner, rifle ready for anything.

* * *

Thane despised rain, it was a heavy reminder of his fast approaching mortality and he felt as if he was drowning with every breath. But he pushed it from his mind, the situation demanded his focus be total and unflinching. He took comfort from the shadows of the containers as he moved among them and from the roar of the downpour that he knew would make his already silent footfalls impossible to detect. He moved ahead of Grunt, who lumbered along heavily as Thane scouted the route ahead.

As they moved deeper, Thane could not help but ponder the nature of the Eclipse smuggling operation. They were now about halfway into the field, yet every container they had passed lay open and completely empty. The mystery only served to further his unease about the entire situation.

They moved swiftly amongst the shipping containers; they had to pass the central buildings and set up in front of the barracks before Shepard reached the control room in the centre of the compound. Speed and caution, it was a delicate balance. However, as always in any operation, it was sheer luck that proved the biggest factor. As Thane approached the corner of a new row, he noticed that the containers ahead were still sealed and locked, the keypad glowing red in the rain. It was during this split second of distraction that a guard rounded the same corner that he was only feet away from and turned, by chance, straight towards him. As fast as Thane was, there was no time to avoid the Batarian seeing him.

Thane reacted in milliseconds. The guard’s brain hadn’t even processed the image in front of him before Thane leapt forwards and delivered a straight kick to the side of the left knee, destroying the joint and pushing the guard to his knees as Thane followed the kick with his weight. The guard could not make more than a gasp of pain before Thane’s fist ploughed through his jaw, jarring the brain into a brief moment of stunned silence. It was all the time Thane needed to neatly grasp the front and back of the batarian’s head and strongly whip his head to the side, snapping his neck in a single motion that was now muscle memory to Thane.

No shots. No shouts. No sound.

Grunt stepped up a second later and gave Thane an approving slap to the back that caught him off guard and sent him staggering against the nearest container. As his shoulder connected with the metal, Thane was startled as he heard a strange noise from inside. His curiosity boiling over, he looked at the key pad on the side of the door as Grunt hauled the now lifeless guard into the shadows. To his surprise, the door was indeed locked but seemingly with no entry code. With the press of a button the red light flicked to green as the magnetic locks disengaged.

“Why lock it with no code?” Grunt asked.

Thane was silent for a moment before answering, he knew what he was about to see.

“It is not intended to lock people out.” He said sadly as he swung open the door.

* * *

Shepard had never been very well suited to stealth missions. She lacked the patience to sit in the shadows and wait for the prey to come to her. She was a soldier, a fighter. They had taken out two patrol guards as they moved towards the main complex. She almost felt guilty, sneaking up on someone and killing them from behind didn’t sit well with her. She would always prefer a straight-up fight. She rounded another corner and finally saw the edge of the containers only a few rows ahead. Moving forward carefully, she took up position by the final row with Jack and Saren right behind her while Tali stayed a few yards behind.

The area ahead was lit with a few dim lights, but the coast looked clear. There were no security cameras in sight, no guards that she could see and there was enough cover and alternate routes to circumvent anything they ran into. She was readying herself to move again when her comm. unit crackled to life.

“Shepard,” came Thane’s voice, “Have you looked in the shipment containers?”

She didn’t have time for this.

“Their smuggling isn’t our problem, Thane.” She hissed “Get back on mission.”

“Shepard.” Thane’s voice came through again, this time carrying a weight to it that Shepard hadn’t heard before, it made her pause. “Open the containers.”

 _Shit,_ she thought as she signalled Tali over to her position, _We don’t have time for this!_

“Stay here with him.” She said, motioning towards Saren.

“Wha-“

“I’ll be right back.” Shepard interrupted, signalling to Jack to follow her. She lead her a few rows back to avoid the possibility of anyone in the compound seeing them before she approached one of the locked crates. Locked, but with no code. It didn’t make sense. Jack must have noticed the same thing as she was already covering the door, shotgun at the ready.

Shepard readied her rifle, turned on the flashlight, took a deep breath and pulled the door open as suddenly as she could and raised her weapon.

The sight in front of her hit her like a sledgehammer.

The container was filled with cages, stacked two high against both sides, each with a human crammed inside. There must have been at least fifty cages, none tall enough to stand in. The smell was a sickening cloud of piss, shit ... and death. Looking closer at the cages, Shepard could see that a large number of the occupiers were dead, while the rest were starved or sick to almost the same condition.

Shepard gasped, unable believe what she was seeing. “This isn’t a spice smuggling operation ... they’re slavers.”

“Motherfuckers.” Said Jack, tears in her eyes.

The rain outside had stopped ... the container was silent. The victims left alive were either starved to the point of unconsciousness, or had been there so long that they no longer cared.

“Mommy?” Came a soft voice from a nearby cage. In the light of Shepard’s flashlight, a pair of small hands reached out to grab the bars, followed by two bright blue eyes that shone through a mess of matted dark hair and grimy facial features.

“Oh my god.” Jack gasped. The little girl couldn’t have been more than four or five years old.

“Where’s mommy?” the girl asked. Shepard couldn’t answer her, she couldn’t speak a word. Her throat felt as if it had been crushed and tears were gathering in her eyes. She looked at Jack, who had a hand covering her mouth as she tried to fight back tears. Shepard understood, Jack had once been exactly as this girl was now. Trying to collect herself, Shepard swallowed hard and slowly moved towards the girl’s cage, tears flowing freely down her cheeks.

“Hey, beautiful.” She choked out as she forced a smile onto her face. “What’s your name?”

“Christa.” The girl replied.

“That’s a pretty name.” Shepard said as she knelt by the cage. “How long have you been here, Christa?”

“I don’t know.” She replied. “The pretty lady gave me her food. She’s sleeping.”

Shepard shone her flashlight into the next cage, where a young woman lay curled in the corner, obviously dead.

“Shepard,” Tali’s voice crackled impatiently in her ear. “Where are you guys?”

“Shepard ...” Jack began before Shepard turned to give her an angry glare before turning back to the little girl.

“We’ll leave her to sleep some more, OK? She’s tired.” Shepard said. “Where did you last see your mom?”

“The bad men took her away. She said she'd come back.”

A fresh tear slipped down Shepard’s face.

“Do you like space ships, Christa?” Shepard asked

The girl nodded.

“Do you wanna go for a ride on mine?”

At this the girl smiled like it was Christmas morning despite the misery of her situation, her white teeth a stark contrast to the grime on her face. It broke Shepard’s heart to see such innocence caught it such an evil place.

“Shepard!” Jack hissed. As much as she hated to admit it, Shepard knew what Jack was thinking and couldn’t deny the logic. They couldn’t take the girl along with them on what was certain to become a combat mission; she was as likely to get one of the others shot as she was herself. However, the look that Shepard gave Jack left absolutely no doubt that she was not open to negotiation as she used her omni-tool to hack the simple mag-lock that held the cage closed.

As Shepard gently took Christa by the hand and made her way back down the row of cells, Jack moved back to the doorway, levelled her shotgun and stepped out, giving the area a quick scan for any more guards before she turned back towards Shepard. As they reached her, Jack grabbed Shepard’s elbow and leaned in close.

“Listen,” she whispered, “We can’t take her along, she’s a fuckin’ kid. She’ll get herself or someone else killed.”

Shepard thought for a moment. She knew that she could take the girl along, it would be much more sensible to leave her there and call in the authorities as soon as they were off-world. Such thoughts vanished as she caught sight of the young woman in her cell who had died to keep this innocent girl alive. How could she let her spend one more minute in a cage? She nodded to Jack before kneeling down to speak to the girl.

“Hey, Christa.” She said in the friendliest voice she could manage. “Jack and I have to go away for a little while. This is very important: I want you to run that way,” she pointed back down the row of containers towards the shuttle. “my friends Miranda and Jacob are waiting at my space ship and they’ll look after you until I get back. Tell them I sent you.” The girl nodded. “But I want you to run as fast as you can and no matter what you hear you can’t stop until you get to my space ship, can you do that?”

The girl nodded. “Where are you going?”

“We’re going to go see the bad men.” Shepard said.

“Are you going to send them away?”

“Yeah,” interrupted Jack, with a cold edge to it that Shepard knew was murderous. “We’re gonna send them away, kid.”

“Okay,” Shepard said, “now go.”

As the girl took off towards the shuttle, Shepard re-checked her rifle and turned around without another word.

“Where have you been?!” Tali hissed as they got back to where she still had her shotgun levelled at Saren’s chest as he sat on the floor casually leaning against the nearest container as if he was waiting for a taxi. “What was in the container?”

Shepard and Jack exchanged a look between them before Shepard answered.

“Slaves.” She said.

“Wha- ... all of them?” Tali said as she looked up and down the row they stood in. “But there are hundreds of containers, that must be thousands of people here.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Saren interrupted. “Sun comes up in an hour, Shepard. You’re running out of time.”

“He’s right.” Shepard said “the mission is top priority, I’ll call in a favour from Hackett when we’re safely away and get a relief force in here. We’re a hundred and fifty metres from the main control room, move out and watch your corners ... let’s go!”

* * *

Krogan. If there was one thing that Thane hoped he would not have to deal with before they reached their overwatch position, it was a krogan patrol guard. And yet Thane crouched in the shadow of the final row of containers, hidden from the eyes of the Krogan who stood only a few metres away between the container field and a large training yard of some kind.

This was a major problem, the set-up position to provide overwatch on the barracks was on the other side of the training yard, at least a hundred metres past the Krogan who now blocked their path. Batarians, humans, salarians and even the armoured turians each had significant weaknesses which could be easily exploited for a silent kill. Krogans, however, were walking tanks; their suits of armour were thick and covered all but their heads, which themselves were protected by their armoured crests and their strong, muscular frames and thick bone structure made snapping their neck impossible. Usually, the only way to kill a krogan was simply to overwhelm it with gunfire; fill it with enough slugs to drop a thresher maw and wound it faster than it could regenerate. However, for a stealth kill, there was but a single weak point that could be exploited: an exposed expanse of flesh at the base of the throat, a knife at the right angle could bite through the thick skin deep enough to sever the major artery.

The problem, of course, was getting to it.

The wide set shoulders of krogan anatomy along with the fact that their armour covered the crest at the back of their head meant that a killing blow could only come from the front, and Krogan security guards tended to have a strict “Shoot first” policy when it came to trespassing strangers. Thane would simply have crept past the Krogan’s position were it not for the fact it would have left Shepard’s position vulnerable in their flank while assaulting the command centre.

Using hand signals only, Thane motioned for Grunt to stay where he was, lest the krogan’s heavy footfalls catch the attention of the guard. Taking extra care to move silently now that the rain had died away, he crept back behind the storage container before jumping up to grab the top of it. Hanging on the side of the container, he waited for a moment, listening for any sound of movement that might indicate that the krogan guard had heard anything. Hearing nothing, he pulled himself up onto the roof and lay on his stomach to keep his profile to a minimum. From his new vantage point he could see that the training yard stretched all the way to the barracks building. Immediately before him lay a shooting range that was ringed with a simple wire fence. Beyond that was a small, empty square that looked like some sort of drill yard. Finally, beyond that stretched an assault course that covered the final stretch of space in front of the barracks which, for anyone exiting the barracks, would provide excellent cover from all of its surrounding with the exception of a watch tower that stood between the drill yard and the assault course. It was probably used during the day for instructors to keep a watch on the progress of the men below. Intentionally positioned to have a perfect view of the entire training ground.

The perfect sniper's nest.

Which left only the primary obstacle: killing the krogan guard and getting to the tower without raising an alarm. The krogan was still facing away from him, casually cradling the M-100 Grenade Launcher in front of him. After giving the area a final scan for any other guards, Thane shifted into a crouching position and drew his Umbranemus knife from its sheath.

Even with his considerable skills, Thane could only hope that this would work. He took a quick moment to say a silent prayer before he took a slow, steadying breath and leapt from his vantage point.

He landed with a foot on each of the krogan’s massive shoulders while his free hand gripped the crest of the krogan’s armour for support as he staggered under the unexpected impact. Before the krogan could realise what was happening, Thane swung his dagger downwards with as much strength as he could muster, plunging it past the krogan’s head and down into the base of his throat before wrenching the blade upwards. He felt the warm blood wash over his hand that indicated that he had successfully severed the major artery he was aiming for.

However, one thing that could never be predicted or accounted for in advance when dealing with a krogan was the power of their rage. Krogan battle rage was legendary and was capable of giving them strength and endurance beyond natural limitations. Even as his lifeblood drenched Thanes hands the Krogan grabbed Thane’s arm and with a roar wrenched him from his back and threw him to the floor. Thane looked up to see the barrel of the krogan’s grenade launcher rising towards him. Using the slip of the wet ground against his leather jacket, Thane spun on his back and kicked the barrel of the weapon away just as it erupted in a deafening shot that sailed over Thane’s head.

The shot exploded against the barracks building just as the towering hulk that was Grunt came charging from the container field and rammed into the krogan guard, the impact sent the guard crashing through the wire fence, landing on the shooting range floor. Before he could recover, Grunt stomped one of his colossal feet onto the guard's chest, plunged his fingers into the gaping wound in his throat, clenched his fist and ripped the guard's throat out. 

Thane was on his feet and running a second later. He had barely even reached the krogan's body before the wailing alarm sounded over the entire compound. Stealth was now useless, the base was at full alert and worse: he wasn't in position.

* * *

Shepard was barely fifty yards into the main complex when she heard the distant roar of a krogan, followed by the unmistakeable sound of an explosive detonation. A moment later the base was drenched in bright lights as an alarm began sounding.

"Thane?!" she shouted into her comm unit, taking cover at the corner of a building. "Thane, what's your status?!"

"We are not in position!" Came Thane's voice through her earpiece.

"SHIT!" she screamed in frustration. She was still fifty metres from the command centre. She looked around to Tali, Jack and Saren who were standing behind her. "Command centre. Double time. MOVE!!"


	8. The Crumb

As he looked at it Garrus had to admit that the Ascalon hardly looked like much. He had expected a sleek, polished and elegant piece of engineering perfection: a Normandy miniature. Instead, he stood against the frame of an advertising unit looking at what could easily be described as a junker. The hull was battered and scorched, typical signs of poor maintenance in an old and weary ship.

However, Garrus was familiar enough with high tech systems to recognise the housing unit for a Thanix cannon mounted on the underside of the hull, an insane amount of firepower for a ship of its size, that cannon could punch a hole clean through a Dreadnought as well as anything else that got in its way. The Ascalon was a thresher maw dressed up to look like an old crone. The scores of dock workers and other civilians that passed by without giving it a second glance were each a testament to how well it wore its disguise.

It had taken hours arguing with Bailey to secure the Ascalon for his own purposes. As far as Bailey was concerned, he was under orders on council authority that the ship was to stay secured and completely off limits, even to his own staff, until a council Spectre came to investigate. Garrus suspected that Bailey had only relented in the end just so that he could go home and get some sleep. Garrus had checked into a presidium hotel to rest up for the few hours until the daytime cycle began. Soft beds, gourmet food, complete silence, safety ... he hadn’t slept a wink. The bed was too comfortable, the food was too fine and the room far too quiet. The lavishness of his surroundings seemed inappropriate given the severity of his mission. He would have been more comfortable in a military standard bunk with a course, heavy blanket; with military rations and the thrum of a starship around him. He had sat up all night, stripping down his weapon in the dark, cleaning and reassembling it over and over until the Citadel daytime cycle began. He couldn't help thinking about Shepard. Was she OK? Had they reached Invictus yet? Had Saren lead them into an ambush? Had he left Shepard at the time when she most needed his protection? He tried to push those questions from his mind. He couldn't change what had happened, and he couldn't help Shepard by worrying. All he could do was carry on and hope he could find some evidence and get back to Shepard before Saren could lead her to disaster. After rushing a breakfast he had headed straight to the Binary Helix docks to find the Ascalon and wait for Wrex.

"Now THAT is one finely built beauty." Came the krogan's voice as he approached Garrus a short while later.

"What gave it away?" Garrus asked as he turned to face him "The thanix cannon?"

"Huh?" Wrex said as he turned to Garrus with a confused look on his face.

"The housing compartment ... on the hull."

"What the fuck you talkin' about?"

Garrus was now as confused as his partner seemed to be. "The ship." he said, pointing.

Wrex followed Garrus' outstretched arm to the Ascalon.

"That's our ship?" he said, sounding underwhelmed "What a hunk of shit."

"What were _you_ talking about?"

"That."

It was now Garrus' turn to follow Wrex's pointing arm. Looking across the docks, he was surprised to see that it pointed to a wreck of a taxi car, parked on a maintenance platform on the other side of the concourse. He was completely lost as to what about the ship had caught Wrex's interest until he noticed the rear of an asari mechanic protruding from where she was working on the underside of the craft. He couldn't help but laugh.

"You know you’re a pig?" he said, trying to sound as disapproving as possible as he tore his eyes away from the admittedly alluring sight of the asari and back to the matter at hand.

“Why?” Wrex asked defensively.

“It’s … objectifying. It’s disrespectful.”

“That’s a bigger load of shit than that ship.” Wrex said dismissively. “Look at her, I mean _really_ look. You’ve got the eye for this stuff, you can look at someone and know if they’re gonna stab you in the back.”

Garrus scoffed, “Not always.”

“Tell me something about her,” Wrex insisted as he indicated the mechanic again.

“I’m not gonna drool over women with you, Wrex.”

“You don’t get it.” Wrex said. “She’s working in a shitty Zakera port pit but she’s using her own tools, they’re way too high end to belong to the pit and she’s got them polished to within an inch of their life. She knows what she’s doing, can tell just by how confident she’s going about it.”

Garrus looked over in surprise. Not only was this the most Wrex had ever spoken to him, but his tone had softened as he spoke, taking on a more wistful, nostalgic tone.

“And she loves ships.” Wrex continued, “that thing is a wreck, barely able to fly and yet she’s cleaning the inside of the reactor housing where the client ain’t even gonna see. She’s gotta be what, two hundred years old, maybe three? She’s beautiful, graceful, confident; she could be shakin’ her ass on a table in any club on the station and yet she’s bought her own tools to earn half the credits in this shithole.”

“Do you know her?” Garrus said after a few moments of Wrex staring wistfully at her.

“Nah,” Wrex said, shaken out of his reverie by the question. “Just reminds me of someone I used to know. Back when I could fight all day and hump all night.”

“Well, Wrex, I am impressed.” Garrus admitted.

“Plus,” Wrex said as he turned toward him, a grin back on his face. “She’s got an amazing ass.”

Garrus could only roll his eyes. “You’re a dick.”

“Yeah, but I’m good at it.” Wrex laughed as he playfully, but not too gently, slapped Garrus on his armoured chest.

"Anyway, what's in the case?" Garrus asked as he noticed the lockbox Wrex was carrying.

"Later." Wrex said simply, looking at the crowds around them. Obviously something to be opened away from prying eyes.

"Well then," Garrus said, starting towards the Ascalon. "Shall we?"

* * *

Thankfully, the inside of the Ascalon was not in keeping with the less than appealing exterior. As he had stepped through the airlock after the painfully slow decontamination process Garrus was bathed in the same soft blue glow that had come to represent a return home to safety aboard the Normandy. It hadn't taken him long to familiarise himself with the ship's layout. The cockpit was a much like the Normandy's, built for a single pilot and a maximum of two additional people manning the sensor and weapon stations. The rear of the ship was occupied by the banks of VI databanks and the mass effect core with access to the lower level, which was dedicated to a small cargo hold and the engineering spaces. Cerberus had certainly liked the Normandy's idea of a huge core in a small ship and had fitted the Ascalon with a similarly oversized core for its size, along with a short-term version of the Normandy's stealth systems. The midship was divided into a small mess hall with simple but plentiful provisions and an incredibly high-tech armoury that almost made Garrus drool when he saw the vast array of stored modifications and attachments ready to be installed. The former also served as the crew quarters, with three bunks recessed into the far wall.

"Bottom bunk is mine." Wrex stated as the eyed it.

"Fine by me," Garrus said, smiling. "This is well built, but I don't think I could sleep too soundly with half a tonne of krogan right above me."

“And I don't want your turian stink drifting up to me." Wrex quipped back.

Garrus ignored the jibe as he moved over to the metallic case that Wrex had left upon the mess table. He eyed it curiously.

"So," He said, pointing to the box. "What did you get for Christmas?"

Wrex wandered over slowly, a smug smile on his face as he gave his slow, grumbling chuckle and punched in the code for the magnetic lock.

"This," Wrex said as he slowly opened the case. "is Meg."

Garrus stood for a few seconds in silence, not quite able to comprehend what he was seeing. It was the largest pistol he had ever seen. A primitive looking bulk of metal that looked like a cross between an old human revolver, a Claymore shotgun and an orbital defence cannon. Like the Claymore, the enormous handgun had a brutal simplicity to its look that made it seem as if it was constructed by Vorcha with scrap metal rather than scientists with cutting edge materials.

"What the –"

"Special order I put in with a group of scientists a couple years ago. Humans might be small, soft little bastards but I will say this: They've got bigger balls than they do brains. Thousand years the krogan and turians been blasting each other's balls off and it's the humans that finally come along and give us two of the best shotguns on the market. Crazy bastards can't even hold the damn Claymore but that didn't stop 'em thinkin' it up. Anyway, I figured if they can do that then maybe they can give me a pistol with better kick."

Garrus was still struggling to take in the size of the barrel. "So ... how many laws does this thing this break?"

"None that I care about."

Garrus had to smile at that.

"But the size of it ... How many shots do you get out of this thing?"

Wrex smiled proudly, as if he had invented the gun himself.

"It uses thermal clips and old-style heat sinks. So, you use up the five rounds in the clip then you can fire a shot every ten or fifteen seconds. Ammo block doesn't last so long though, the slugs this thing shears off are massive. Might get a hundred rounds out of it before it needs changed."

"You planning on shooting a hundred people in one day?"

"No." Wrex said. "Not that many. Some people I'll want to shoot twice."

"Nice. And ... "Meg"?"

"I dunno, some Earth fish or somethin', big teeth." Wrex said as he hefted it in his hand, getting a feel for the weight and grip. "But the name fits, I knew a female on Tuchanka called Meg. She was just as fat, twice as ugly and almost as vicious as this bitch."

"How romantic."

"Yeah." Wrex said dismissively "So what's the plan with Septimus?"

"He won't be here for a while, but I'll head out soon, just in case he has any friends coming early."

"And you think he'll just give up that intel?"

"Well, I didn't exactly give him much choice."

Wrex shrugged, "He's military. He'll know more than a few gun hands."

"No," Garrus said thoughtfully. "Septimus is Turian military to the bone, he has a strict code. He lives by it."

"He's a smuggler and a drug peddler." Wrex countered, clearly unconvinced.

"He's a soldier. He never stopped fighting the Shadow War with the Terminus Systems. He still views them as a threat if they get themselves organised and the scary part is that he may not be wrong about it. He seizes the drugs coming out of the Terminus Systems, turns them around and sells them back to rival gangs, it keeps our streets clean and the Terminus gangs at each other's throats. He'll happily take the profits into his pocket but I doubt he'd kill a fellow turian on his own side to protect his cut for such a meagre price as a dead man's secrets. Plus, he's too smart to try something like that."

"You realise how convincing that sounds while you're loading an assault rifle?" Wrex chuckled.

Garrus hadn't even been aware that he had begun to maintain his Mattock assault rifle as he was speaking. Muscle memory lead his hands through the motions as he replaced the ammunition block and swapped out the thermal clips.

"Yes, well." He said, chuckling. "I said he was smart, not that I was stupid." He checked the time on his omni-tool. "Come on, it’s almost time."

* * *

Septimus entered straight through the main gate right on time, typical military. Apart from a quick scan of the area he looked confident with no sign of being suspicious, a good sign: treachery was, in Garrus' experience, always preceded with suspicion and paranoia. He should have seen it with Sidonis before he betrayed them; the man had been paranoid from the first. Garrus had dismissed it as nerves, a result of being one of only eight men on Omega that EVERY criminal hated. His men had paid with their lives for his poor judgement, and he had learned to be a lot less trusting since then.

"Any followers, Wrex?" Garrus asked into the comm. system in his visor.

"Only my old drinkin' buddy."

Garrus saw him enter a few seconds behind Septimus, the same bodyguard that Wrex had so gently sent to sleep at the bar the day before. He was noticeably more cautious than his boss. He hung back, checking the whole area with sharp eyes for any sign of ambush or threat. Septimus, on the other hand, trusted his instincts. He had his opinion of Garrus and seemed content to trust to it enough to approach him as soon as he saw him with little or no thought of any treachery.

"Septimus." Garrus greeted him pleasantly and extended his hand, hoping that the exchange could be done amicably. The general left the hand hanging in the air while his face betrayed his indignation at being bullied into his current situation.

"Vakarian." He said coldly, the last name term clearly indicating that this would be a business exchange with about as much warmth as deep space. Another good sign: if he was planning to have Garrus killed he would be in a better mood.

"Do you have the intel?" Garrus asked, dismissing the niceties and getting straight to business.

"It wasn't difficult, but you've drawn attention to yourself by digging around in this, there's a lot of unsavoury people with name "Vakarian" on their tongues and some even worse people saying the name "Archangel”“.

"They can talk all they want, I have things to do."

"Well you and your friend should keep a low profile if you want to have enough time to get them done before your old friends catch up to you."

"I'll keep it in mind." Garrus said dismissively, "Now, the assassin."

The general's aggravation elevated at the prompt, information about a suspected former member of one of the most respected and covert Turian military units. He opened a file on a datapad and scanned over the data.

"Your assassin wasn't hard to find. Facial tattoos indicated he was from Cipritine, Palevan. That and his age made it easy. His name is ... or was Primus Nero before you damn near blew him in half. Decent political connections through his father who drank with half of the hierarchy. Standard enrolment into the military at age 15, showed exceptional skill as a combatant but no real command potential. Volunteered for special operations right out of training, got his wish and proved his mettle against Terminus pirates and gangs for the next few years.

"His recruitment by the Talons came at an opportune moment when he was nineteen, it saved him from a court martial for excessive brutality against an unarmed captive on an anti-smuggling operation the year before. His father probably greased the wheels to get him transferred before the case could go to the tribunes. Served with the Talons in covert operations, mostly in the Terminus Systems for six years, got a bad reputation for under-the-table deals and taking too much pleasure in his wet-work but he was a good fire-team member so they kept him on.

"He finally snapped the leash at age twenty-five when he was given his own fire-team to lead. An operation against a Batarian slaving station went sideways when he decided to go off mission for a bloodbath in the slaver barracks. A lot of Talons died that day; most of them didn't have to. He was confined to quarters but skipped off-world and fell straight in with his underworld contacts as hired muscle and we lose him for a few years until he turned up as part of a small mercenary group with a huge price tag. They eventually developed into a well-run and brutal gang that blew away the competition for years until a power struggle got him kicked back onto the street. After that it's pretty standard, he's spent the last 20 years as a high cost merc for pretty much anyone with the credits to afford him ... but he stayed well clear of the bigger gangs."

"You're saying he hasn't worked with Eclipse for twenty years?" Garrus asked, confused.

Septimus paused doubtfully, "Well that's the hitch, he NEVER worked with Eclipse. In fact, they just put a price on his head that could buy you a few months in bed with the Consort herself. His original gang had another leadership coup, he went back to join them and it seems the Eclipse are nervous about the competition's new leadership and want him permanently retired, along with the rest of the new execs. "

"That doesn't make sense, he was working with Eclipse hitmen in Chora's Den when we took him down."

"Well, he's a Blue Suns' boy, no doubt about it." Septimus said.

"Wait ... what?" Garrus said, "You’re saying this guy is an old Blue Suns enforcer and he recently helped oust the current leadership?"

"Yeah," Septimus continued, "Vido Santiago met a less-than-pretty demise and the killer took control of the Suns, called back all his old crew including Nero and started running things ... aggressively. No intel on the new boss yet, or Nero's movements over the past few weeks."

"No need." Garrus said as he turned back towards the Ascalon, he had heard all he had to. He spoke into his comm. unit. "Wrex, we're leaving."

"Vakarian!" Septimus called from behind him, he turned to meet his hard eyes. "You shouldn't have played this like you have, don't come to me for help again. You and I are no longer on good terms."

"I've got friends, Septimus." Garrus said coldly. "If I have to have you as enemy to protect them, then that's fine by me."

With that he turned and walked back to the Ascalon without looking back. Wrex was just approaching the airlock as Garrus stepped inside.

"Where we headed?" He asked.

"We're going to see an old friend." Garrus said icily. "We're going to ask Zaeed Massani why he tried to kill Shepard."


	9. The Storm

As he charged across the training yard, Grunt could feel his blood starting to surge faster and faster through his veins. With the alarms still wailing loud enough to wake a volcano, stealth was out the airlock and he was charging headlong into a fight. One pure Krogan and a Drell assassin against a full mercenary barracks, they could be outnumbered by a hundred to two ... it was what he was made for. He had hated sneaking through the shadows, hiding from his enemies; hiding was an act of the weak and the fearful. Now he was rushing to keep up with the nimble Drell who was gliding over obstacles towards the battleground in front of them.

As he approached the open drill yard in front of the barracks Grunt could see that beyond it lay a maze of training grounds with makeshift shelters, obstacles and mock-up battlegrounds, a lot of low cover and tight corners, perfect for shotgun and assault rifle fighting. He saw Thane at the corner of the final building before the yard, leaping from the stairs to the railing and finally onto the roof, letting off his first shot only seconds after he reached his position.

Finally into the courtyard, Grunt could see that the barracks were already coming to life. Over the assault grounds, which were now illuminated by the huge floodlights, he could see windows lighting up one by one. He couldn’t see the entrance from his level but from the frequency of Thane’s viper sniper rifle sending rounds over his head he knew that at least some of the mercenaries must already be coming out to face them.

Grunt started towards the eastern edge of the square to defend the most direct route between the barracks and the Command Centre. He didn’t intend to let any mercs get to Shepard before she hit the C.C. However, he had only made it halfway across the square before a small group broke from cover and made straight for the south-east exit towards Shepard’s position. The second in the group hadn’t even gotten six feet from cover before Thane’s rifle slug punched a hole through his temple, sending him sprawling into the watery mud. Grunt raised his assault rifle and sent a storm of bullets towards the mercs as they ran. He had never been a fan of the sniper rifles or the Mattock, he didn’t have the patience to make every bullet count; he liked the feel of fully automatic fire against his shoulder, the constant thumping of the rifle butt into his armour and the sound of it set his blood on fire. Unlike the other team members he used one of the Collector assault rifles that they had brought to the Normandy for study. He would have preferred the heavier, more powerful Revenant machine gun but it was only effective at a very short range and at that distance the shotgun was king. The collector rifle was a good mix of having a good chance of hitting the target in the first place and making sure that it hurt like hell when it hit.

Between Thane, who was picking off the group members with a few well-placed rounds and Grunt’s maelstrom of bullets the mercenaries, although moving targets, didn’t stand a chance. They had obviously stumbled out the door in not much more than their bedclothes, with whatever weapons they had by their bunk. Without armour or shields Grunt’s barrage only had to catch a target once to cause some damage. The first, most accurate shot caught the front runner in the chest and he dropped instantly, while a few more were caught two or three times and fell wounded or dead. The remainder only got hit mildly enough to throw them off their stride, slowing them for an instant, but Thane was waiting. Grunt couldn’t help but admire the skill as he saw runners stagger from one of his shots, each slowing only for a second before a heavier, more powerful shot took them from a different angle, either through the centre of the chest or clean through the skull, killing one after another within heartbeats. It was all over in seconds and Grunt barely even had to break his stride before reaching the assault grounds.

He put his back to the wall as he swapped his rifle for the shotgun that sat clipped to his lower back. The cheaply constructed mock-up buildings, rooms and corridors would make the perfect hunting ground for such a weapon: a close quarters maze where you could stumble onto an enemy round any corner. Usually, survival would come down simply to whoever was able to fire first, accuracy would be next to pointless in such close spaces and Grunt had better armour and shielding than any of the mercenaries. But Grunt had an even bigger advantage, he could see through walls.

“Krios,” Grunt said into his comm. unit “You got a good view?”

“Yes,” came the response as Grunt heard another shot crack over his head into the assault grounds behind him. “I will lead you to the targets.”

“... And I will kill them all.” Grunt said with a smile.

* * *

Shepard could hear the blood pulsing in her ears, every surge felt like sand slipping out of an hourglass. Each heartbeat was more time lost, and she had very little time she could afford to lose. The alarms were still wailing in the buildings all around her and she could already hear the sound of distant gunfire echoing above it all. With every passing moment the mercenaries would be increasing the pressure on Thane and Grunt. She had to get to the control room before they were overwhelmed.

She only slowed her pace to check each intersection or turn. The interruptions were infuriating but it could be the difference between life and death if she came across any guards. At the end of the second cluster of buildings she slowed to a stop and raised her rifle before she took a steadying breath and stepped around the corner, her rifle muzzle leading the way. The control centre stood in front of her. The door was still open, but she could see multiple people moving frantically inside and the door was guarded by four mercenaries in full armour. They were on alert and spotted her the moment she stepped around the corner, raising their weapons as quickly as they could.

Shepard, however, already had her Mattock rifle up, sighted and was in a more static, steady position. She shifted her aim slightly through the tactical scope and squeezed the trigger. She aimed low on the first target and, using the trick that Garrus had taught her, kept her grip loose and didn’t fight the recoil. She let the natural muzzle climb from each shot carry her aim slightly higher and let off two more shots in quick succession. The first round caught the human at hip level, the second in the chest and the third hit just below his collarbone.

She shifted her aim to the second target as the guards began to fire back at her. She let her shields absorb the first few rounds as she loosed another two rounds. The second target had shields, the blue ripples of energy absorbing her rounds. Shot placement didn’t count; each round would sap the shield’s power no matter where it hit so Shepard dropped to one knee and fired as fast as she could, trying to take down the shields before her own broke. As her shield warning alarm started sounding in her ear, she saw another guard coming out of control room, adding his firepower to the already punishing barrage. She spun back around the corner into cover just as Jack came up and took cover beside her. Tali and Saren followed behind her soon after. The hail of gunfire pummelling the corner of the building was unrelenting, too much to leave the cover of the building for more than a couple of seconds. The mercenaries were obviously poorly trained, but they evidently had no shortage of ammunition and were not shy about using it.

“Tali!” Shepard shouted over the cacophony of gunfire and alarm sirens “Heat ‘em up.”

Tali brought up her omni-tool and keyed in a command. “Ready.” She confirmed.

“Jack, you watch Saren.” Shepard said “Tali, you crack that door the second they seal it, I don’t wanna give ‘em a second to breathe in there.”

Jack switched places with Tali, who checked her weapon before raising her omni tool again.

Shepard ejected a thermal clip and readied herself behind the corner of the wall. “NOW!”

Tali activated her omni-tool just before she and Shepard stormed around the corner. Her overload hit the mercenaries in the same instant, over heating all of their weapons as they tried to fire at the two women who were now unleashing a devastating salvo of gunfire. Those few seconds were all Shepard needed to turn the tide. Without shields two of the remaining guards fell quickly while the third used his remaining power to fall back inside the control room. His shields failed at the last instant and Shepard saw him reel from an impact to the shoulder and fall to the floor just as the thick metal door slammed shut.

Shepard and Tali reached the building a few seconds later, each taking cover on different sides of the door as Tali worked her omni-tool’s hacking systems for a few second before cursing in frustration.

“What is it?” Shepard asked.

“It’s an old tech blast door. There’s no system to hack it’s just a big slab of metal. I can’t get in.”

“Jack!” Shepard called to Jack who was coming toward them with Saren. “Knock on the door.”

“My FUCKIN’ pleasure!!” Jack shouted as she charged towards the huge metal slab that was blocking their entry. Her entire body erupted in blue biotic energy as Jack exploded into a biotic charge just before she hit the door. The structure couldn’t stand the astonishing power of her biotics and she thundered through into the control room, taking the blast door and a large portion of the surrounding wall with her in a cloud of concrete dust. Shepard and Tali were ready and waiting and stormed in right behind her, each sweeping a different side of the room. Tali swept to the left and took out a control operator as he reached for his weapon while Shepard tackled a human dressed in heavy armour and a command headset, obviously the base commander, who was frantically typing commands into a console.

“Clear.” Tali called.

“Clear.” Shepard replied as she pinned her struggling captive’s arm behind his back.

“Clearly fucked.” Jack joked as she pointed to the crushed body of the guard protruding from beneath the section of demolished wall that still housed the blast door.

Shepard knelt on her captive’s back and snapped a magnetic restraint band around the wrist of the mercenary commander as he screamed insults into the floor. Looking around the room she saw that Tali was already working away at the workstation while Jack made a quick scan of the room for anyone else who may be hidden away. She used the moment of stillness to take a slow, steadying breath as she watched Jack survey her own destructive handiwork.

 _So much for a quiet in and out mission_ , she thought to herself.

* * *

Grunt wiped blood from around his eye as he jogged through the training grounds, he was spattered in blood both red and blue. The droplets felt like fire on his skin, the smell fuelled the savage animal in his blood, he had never felt more pure as a krogan than in the heat of battle. The artificial, tank bred memories were swept away by the instinctual savagery of the Krogan battle rage, washed away in the blood tide. His breathing came as short growls as he tried to focus on the voice in his comm system, struggling to be heard over the rushing pulse in his ears.

“Three targets.” Thane’s voice came through along with the sound of bullets ricocheting against metal in the background “The other side of the building to your left. Moving south towards you.”

“Got it.” Grunt responded. He turned left at the edge of the building, shotgun in hand, and jogged to the other corner and waited. He heard the mercenaries coming down the parallel path, checking around each corner, he could smell their fear, they didn’t know who they were hunting, where he was, or that they, in fact, were the ones being hunted.

Sweet terror in his nostrils.

Grunt waited, trying to quiet the breath that burned in his throat as the flashlight beam lit up the wall that he was hiding against, sweeping clumsily across without even a second glance before moving on. They were stupid and afraid, seeking comfort behind a couple of flashlights that pretty much acted as a giant “come shoot me” signal.

Grunt came thundering around the corner as he heard the mercenaries move to continue their search. He tried to keep quiet, but the rage turned his vision red and he let out a thunderous roar as he got to within a few metres of the closest man. The group, two humans and a turian, were advancing forward in a line as Grunt came at them from their flank. The first man, dumbstruck by the fear of having a charging half-tonne krogan materialise from the shadows, didn’t even raise his weapon as he turned to face Grunt. The other two were a little brighter, trying to bring their guns to bear on the threat, but their formation left them both perfectly lined up behind their useless comrade.

Grunt’s shoulder hit the first man low in the chest, his momentum cracking a few ribs and picking the human’s weight up into the air. Grunt continued the charge with the man on his shoulder, sending the other two men sprawling in the mud as he slammed into the wall on the other side of them, crushing the human’s ribcage between Grunt's weight and the unyielding concrete. The other mercenaries were scrambling in the mud to get to their feet. The turian was at least half competent and quickly spun into a firing position on one knee. Grunt pushed his weight away from the wall, freeing his shotgun arm and letting the crushed body of the first human to drop into the muck as the first rounds were soaked up by his shields. He raised his shotgun and fired a round barely a foot from the turian’s light armour. The armour was good quality and may have withstood a blast from distance, but so much force in such a tight spread shattered the ceramic armour and sent a hundred shards of it into his torso. The impact kicked him into the mud like a railroad spike, where he lay motionless.

Turning, Grunt saw the third man already lying face down in a shallow puddle that was slowly turning red with blood. While recovering his footing he must have stumbled into a clear sightline for Thane to take a shot between the buildings.

“Grunt? Thane?” Shepard’s voice came through the comm system. “What’s your status?”

“Having fun, Shepard.” Grunt replied. “This is easy.”

“Shepard.” Thane’s voice cut in. “The enemy is poorly armed and unorganised, we are holding so far. I am keeping my sights on the exit to your position, none have gotten through so far.”

“Good job. Be careful and hold your ground. Out.”

* * *

As she cancelled her comm unit, Shepard turned back towards the struggling mercenary commander on the floor. As she dragged him to his knees, he took a moment to survey the scene around him, as well as his three female assailants.

“What the fuck is this, ‘Charlie’s Angels’?” He said, sounding much more irritated than afraid, probably overconfident of his men in the barracks, his political connections on the planet, or his credit account.

“Shut up.” Shepard said dismissively “Jack, secure the door ... hole. And bring in the informer.” She left out Saren’s name but watched the man’s face intently.

“Has one of my men turned rat?!” The mercenary seemed furious at the concept, “I’ll feed him to the fuckin’ slaves. What’s his name?”

“What’s YOUR name?” Shepard fired back calmly.

“Fuck you, bitch!” he spat at her feet.

“That’s no way to talk to a lady.” Saren’s voice came crawling over Shepard’s shoulder, sending chills down her spine. She watched the mercenary’s face intently for any signs of recognition as his eyes went to Saren who was stepping through the hole where the door used to stand. She saw none, but couldn’t be sure whether that made her feel more secure or less.

“You’re not one o’ mine but I’ll skin you nonetheless, you blue-blooded bastard.” He spat again as he turned his attention back to Shepard. “You too, bitch. I’ll let the lads have their turn with you before I kill you. Who are you? A cop?”

“Me?” Shepard said, trying to swallow the urge to rip the man’s tongue out. “I’m Commander Shepard, Council Spectre.”

That shut him up, she thought as she watched his face turn grey as he finally recognised the face in front of him, framed by her now famous red hair.

“You see, your operation here might have enough cash to turn away the local law enforcement, but you made the mistake of sending some men to kill me last week which got my attention and unfortunately for you, I’m not for sale.”

“Wha-“ the commander began, his voice now cracking with fear. “That wasn’t my hit, I was just the contractor. I just supplied the men, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with the plannin’. I’m innocent!”

“Innocent?” Tali said from where she was working in at a computer station, she sounded outraged “There are thousands of slaves starving out there and you dare call yourself innocent?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that.” The merc said, “They were supposed to be sold.”

“To who?” Shepard asked.

“I can’t tell you that, they’ll kill me.”

“He doesn’t know shit.” Jack said, sounding bored “Can I light him on fire?

“Wha-?”

“Fair enough.” Shepard said casually.

“Are you fuckin’ crazy?!” the mercenary screamed at Shepard.

“No, but she is.” Shepard said as she pointed towards Jack who was grinning sadistically as she slowly stalked towards him. “Who was buying the slaves?”

“The Collectors!” he said, obviously fearing the tattooed psychopath more than the repercussions of spilling the beans on his clients. “They’ve been buying as many as I could lay my hands on, they pay enough to make a profit even from buying and reselling. This was supposed to be the biggest shipment yet but they cut contact weeks ago. They just disappeared! We’ve been trying to sell as many slaves on as we could but there’s too many.”

“So, you’re letting them starve to death.” He didn’t have an answer for that.

“I have a lot of money,” he said, “You can have it … please-“

“Blood money.” Shepard said flatly “Not interested.”

The commander’s eyes were frantic, darting around the room, helplessly searching for anything that could give him hope.

“What about the hit on me, did the Collector’s call that one in?” Shepard asked. She knew they hadn’t, it was too simple and too clumsy for the collectors and had probably been arranged after she had destroyed them. The mercenary glanced at Jack nervously before shaking his head.

“Who hired you?” She pressed as she circled around the captive, getting into a position where she could watch both him and Saren at the same time.

“The turian, the big guy. I don’t know his name, I swear!”

“You aren’t exactly giving me a lot of reasons to let you walk away from this.”

Shepard saw his eyes bulge in desperation at the implication that he could talk his way out of the hole he found himself in.

“Otherwise …” Jack said as she began to glow blue with biotic energy. “You’re mine.”

“Jack really doesn’t like slavers.” Tali said from the console. “Personal history.”

“I like ‘em when they’re screamin’.” Jack said with a dark smile on her face, not taking her eyes from the slaver’s.

“He left something!” he shouted desperately “A data-box. He left it. I heard him say something about ‘phase 2’ to one of the guys when he left it.”

“Where?”

“In the safe, he changed the combination.” Looking to the opposite wall, Shepard saw a high-tec safe set into the concrete. She moved over to it and began the hacking programme on her omni-tool. It didn’t take long for the safe to slide open, revealing a small, grey databox, a credit chit and nothing else. Shepard pocketed the credit chit, they may be able to trace the money back to a source. She returned to the mercenary with the databox in her hand.

“What’s on it?” She asked.

“I d,d,dunno ...”

“Jack...” Shepard began. The mercenary fell backwards onto his back as she advanced.

“NO!” He screamed, tears rolling down his cheeks “I DUNNO! I swear I don’t know. He didn’t say anything else, I promise. PLEASE!”

He was trying fitfully to crawl away from the glowing biotic, he was terrified, the stench of urine hit Shepard as the mercenary broke down into a pitiful sobbing fit. Slavers were all cowards at their core.

“Jack,” Shepard said “leave him be.”

“Shepard.” Tali called her over. “We have a problem.”

“What is it?”

“I downloaded everything I could from the terminal. There’s not much here, but then I looked at the last programmes he attempted to access before we breached. It was encrypted with Salarian Zeta-class quantum key distribution encryption system-“

“Tali,” Shepard interrupted “You just said about six words in a row I didn’t understand. What’s the problem?”

“I managed to crack it. It’s a killswitch.”

“A what?”

“There is a canister of some form of nerve agent in each container. The killswitch releases all the nerve agent at once, enough to kill every slave out there.”

“Can you disable it?” Shepard asked.

“I already disconnected the switch here, but there are multiple remote killswitches all over the planet. It must be a security measure for their political contacts. An easy way to clear out and leave no witnesses if there is any trouble. If any of the mercenaries get word out of our attack, they could hit the killswitch.”

“Can you disable the remote switches?”

Tali shook her head. “Each switch is independent; I would have to track each one down individually, I could do it from here but it would take hours.”

“Well then,” Saren’s voice came from behind, “Only one thing to do.”

Shepard and Tali both spun around, guns raised as the muffled scream of the mercenary captain cut through the control room. Saren was stood behind the kneeling mercenary, one clawed hand gripping his lower jaw, holding it shut as the other pressed against the back of his head. The mercenary was frantically reaching over his head with his bound hands, desperately clawing at empty air, trying to dislodge the powerful grip around his head. His wide eyes locked onto Shepard’s in a desperate, pleading look before his head snapped round to the side with a sharp crack and the eyes jerked up towards the ceiling, staring blankly into space as he fell forward to lie motionless.

“Motherfucker!” Jack shouted as she came through the door, weapon raised.

“Stand down!” Shepard shouted as she lowered her own weapon.

“What?!” Jack shouted, weapon still pointed at Saren as he let out a low, condescending chuckle.

“What other option was there?” Saren said condescendingly “If we leave him here he could trigger the kill switch or at least contact those who can.” Shepard walked towards him, staring at the body at his feet. “Or would you drag him into a gunfight with his hands tied? He’d take any chance to get you killed. Any mercenary left alive after we leave could raise an alarm. Face it –“

He was cut short as Shepard slammed her boot into the back of his knee before she used the stock of her rifle to smash over the back of his head. The impact sent him onto all fours. His head was still spinning when Shepard’s boot thudded into his stomach, crushing the air from his lungs and pushing him onto his back. By the time he opened his eyes, he was staring straight into the muzzle of her Mattock hunting rifle.

“You might not be synthetic anymore, Saren, but you’re still a machine inside.” Shepard said, venom dripping from every word “You don’t care about life. You don’t care about anyone.”

“I’m right, Shepard.” Saren said, still looking smug as he gasped for air.

“I don’t care. Nobody executes prisoners on my crew. Nobody.” Shepard backed away, gun still pointed at Saren. “Tali, if we level this control room is there any other buildings with a communication unit on site that the mercs could use to raise an alarm to the kill-switch holders?”

Tali went back to the control terminal for a few seconds before answering. “There’s a small comm system in the barracks meant for internal communication. They would have to patch into a relay system manually which would take some time but they could get planetary contact if they have a decent technician.”

Shepard was silent for a few moments. There was no easy option.

“We have to level that barracks.” She said finally before raising the Normandy. “Joker, get ready to bring the thunder. We need a low-level strike on the barracks on the Northern edge of the compound on my go.”

“That’s a precision strike, Commander.”

“Eye of the needle, Joker. We can’t have any collateral, we’re gonna be stood right outside.”

“Roger that, Commander. You want the building brought down?”

“Turn it to dust, Joker.”

“We’ll need to disable the Anti-Air.” Jack called. “it’ll tear ‘em a new one if we don’t.”

“Tali, find me the primary AA gun, if we take out that one and the whole battery should go offline. Jack, let’s get ready to move.” She said as Tali turned back to the control module, “Thane, Grunt, things still quiet over there?”

* * *

“A moment, Shepard.” Thane said as he watched the barrack’s entrance through his rifle scope. He focused on his breathing as he moved the crosshairs over every possible exit point from the building, over the rooftop and whipped back to the entrance. Something wasn’t right. There had been no activity for minutes, the mercenaries had fallen back into the barracks as soon as they realised that the enemy was on their doorstep and had killed the first wave of responders. Now Thane sat patiently waiting for any unfortunate enemy to come into his crosshairs, but suddenly he found himself tense. He hadn’t seen any movement from the doorway, nor any other sign of life for minutes.

Although there had been no attack, there had been the constant din of movement and commotion coming from inside the barracks as the mercenaries mobilised their forces within. But it was silent now. They were ready, but not attacking. What were they waiting for?

He focused on his breathing, a slow, steady rhythm. The rise and fall contained by his taught core muscles and straight back, not causing any sway in his shoulders or arm that would cause his aim to falter for even a moment. The only sound was the wet thuds of Grunt’s armoured boots pacing back and forward behind a low wall in the courtyard below like a bull in a cage.

Suddenly the door to the barracks swung open. Thane centred his crosshairs on the entrance but could see nothing, it was pitch black inside. An arm whipped around the doorframe and threw three objects into the air. Thane followed them with his scope, they were not grenades, they reached the top of their arc high above the courtyard before stopping in mid-air. He heard an almost ultrasonic whir building as the devices began to spin.

EMP Concussion Flares. He realised too late as a blinding blue light erupted from the balls, sending out a shockwave that sent him sprawling onto his back. His head was spinning as he regained his position. The courtyard was pitch black as he brought his weapon back to his shoulder, the EMP blast had taken out all the courtyard lights and night-blinded him in the process, it would take a while for his eyes to readjust to the darkness.

Through the ringing in his ears Thane heard the gunfire erupting less than two seconds after the flares detonated. Five weapons, assault rifles and SMGs. Now six, seven. They were already out the door and into the training yard, targeting Grunt who had already begun to answer with his own Collector rifle. Thane’s night sight had still not recovered. He sighted the muzzle flashes and aimed roughly two or three feet behind them. He fired twice at the first target before he heard the faint grunt of pain and the firing stopped. He was tracking to the next target when three more mercenaries broke from the cover of the doorway, weapons all trained onto Thane’s perch. Rounds hissed passed his head and ricocheted of the ledge below him as he rolled sideways away from the main arc of fire. They had obviously been waiting in the doorway, waiting for his muzzle flash to reveal his position. He spun into cover behind an air filtration unit as rounds thudded into the metal.

“Shepard, the mercenary counterattack has begun. They are well armed and organised.”

“Can you hold?” Came Shepard’s response.

“For now.”

With that he spun back out from cover and sighted the nearest cluster of enemies. He targeted the mercenaries in light armour first. Two shots at center mass was enough to penetrate the shields, he paused for half a heartbeat to make sure that his third shot hit the heart. His second target proved to not have any shields and went down with the first round. He ignored the more heavily armoured targets, he had to reduce the number of guns on the field as quickly as possible and the impact on the mercenaries’ morale would be greater seeing more of their comrades fall quickly.

* * *

In the control centre, Shepard turned back to Tali, who was still working away at the computer terminal.

“Thane and Grunt can’t hold for long, I need the AA server now!”

“Hang on…” Tali said, her voice tense with concentration, “Got it! The main server for the anti-aircraft battery is located at the base of the North-East cannon. About 150 yards away.”

“Get ready to move!” Shepard called out “Tali, sabotage that terminal, if any mercs get in here I don’t want them to be able to communi-“

She was cut off as Jack fired two shotgun blasts into the base of the terminal, sending explosions of sparks in every direction.

“Sabotage complete.” Jack said with a smirk.

“Let’s go.” She said as she tucked the mysterious data drive into her armour and powered up her weapon.

* * *

The counterattack was relentless. Thane had been forced to relocate twice along the rooftop to more covered areas. Now he was directly above the assault mock-ups and miniature buildings. Grunt had been moving erratically around the yard, following no particular pattern or strategy beyond causing as many casualties as possible until a group was destroyed or had retreated, then moving on to another area. Although he could not see Grunt at present, it wasn’t difficult to track his movements as he saw the flurry of gunfire, screams and explosions everywhere the Krogan war machine went.

Thane had structured his response far more systematically. His first problem had been the overwhelming volume of gunfire as the mercenaries had come out in force, firing endlessly at his position. He had begun by taking out as many lightly armoured opponents as possible in his first few volleys. The sight of so many comrades falling so quickly had caused the mercenaries to be far more careful, taking cover and firing in short bursts. This had given him the opportunity to pick out and target the leaders and the well armoured targets. Each took more ammunition to put down but the impact on the enemy morale would be significant. He could feel the momentum shifting back into their favour as he carefully lined up another shot, exhaled, and sent a round straight through the helmet of another target who hadn’t crouched far enough behind cover.

It was then that Thane heard a low thrumming sound starting in the barracks, followed by a high mechanical whine. A large bay door slowly slid open to reveal the two heavy mechs powering up inside. They stepped out into the assault yard in mechanical unison and immediately turned towards Thane’s vantage point. He knew that the weaponry on the heavy mechs would reduce the cover he was using to scrap, and there was nothing more substantial on the rooftop to use. As he saw the bright bursts explode from the mechs’ arms as they each launched high explosive rockets in his direction, he reacted with the only option left to him and jumped from the rooftop into the courtyards below.

He felt the percussive blast of the explosions hit his back as he fell, followed by the heat a moment later, then the stinging impacts of hundreds of pieces of rubble hitting the back of his jacket mid-air. However, he blocked the sensations from his mind and focused on the area in front of him. He would be landing in an exposed space in sight of three armed mercenaries: two who were already coming up from behind their low cover, and another only a few yards in front of him who’s shotgun would rip apart his shields as soon as he hit the ground.

Focussing his mind, Thane used his biotics to create a brief but powerful mass effect field between himself and the closest mercenary just before he reached the ground. The intense burst of gravity pulled the man off balance and sent him staggering towards Thane, who used the shift in momentum to execute a quick forward roll as he hit the ground, breaking his fall and coming up only a couple of metres from the still off-balance mercenary. Thane had dropped his sniper rifle in midair, the long-ranged weapon would be a liability in such tight quarters, instead he came out of the roll with his pistol in hand. He kicked the shotgun from the stumbling man’s hands before using the sturdy composite frame of the pistol to deliver a crunching blow to his helmet, spinning him around and putting the mercenary between Thane and the other two enemies ahead.

He brought his forearm up under the man’s throat and pinned him in front of Thane as a human shield. The other mercenaries had not hesitated, whether by ruthlessness or fear he did not know, but neither of them seemed to falter at the prospect of shooting through a comrade to kill their enemy as Thane felt the mercenary jerk and twitch with each round fired into his torso. The combination of the man’s bulky armour and large frame were all the cover Thane’s slight body needed as he concentrated on the two enemies, focused, let the energy build up inside him and released a biotic pulse that hit the two men. The wave effectively made the men completely weightless, causing each of them to drift above their cover helplessly as the gravity of the world beneath them was completely counterbalanced. Thane let his human shield drop to the floor as he raised his pistol and carefully fired three rounds into selected weak points in each enemy’s armour.

Two biotics bursts in quick succession had made his head spin, and he staggered sideways as he tried to steady himself. He was just shaking his head to clear his senses when three more armoured and shielded enemies came round the corner with weapons raised. With no time to stage a proper response and too many enemies to handle, Thane dashed sideways and down the nearest alleyway, rounds shattering the concrete behind him as he went.

The alley was littered with the ruins of the battle going on around him. Grunt had obviously been through here and had made liberal use of high explosives that had left it almost impassable by most. Thane, however, moved through it like smoke; vaulting over a fallen pillar before slipping through a mangled piece of wire fencing and round the burning remains of large storage unit. Ahead the alleyway was cut in half by a stairway that had come away from the building to his left and fallen across the alley, smashing the opposing wall. The frame had come to a stop a few feet from the ground, and below it Thane could see the armoured boots of mercenaries beyond it. He heard gunfire from behind him crack against the rubble around him as he ran and sped up, using the wet mud and dropping to his knees just short of the obstruction, sliding himself under without breaking pace.

As he passed beneath the fallen stairway he saw four men on the other side, all facing away from him as they moved down the alleyway in the opposite direction. His slide brought him right up behind the first, a human who had already started to turn back to investigate the noise. Thane came up with his pistol in one hand and the dark shadow of his Umbranemus knife in the other. He drove his leading foot into the back of the human’s knee while he was still sliding. The man was forced to one knee and brought down to Thane’s level.

He gripped the man’s chin firmly and used his momentum to roll over the mercenary’s back, whipping his chin round and snapping his neck. The roll brought him to a crouch between the middle pair. Reversing his grip, he threw the Umbranemus knife end over end, landing it in the thin collar skin of the Turian leading the group, who roared out in alarm and pain, grabbing at the handle that was now protruding from his neck. As the other two panicked at the appearance of their new enemy, Thane swept his right leg in a wide arch at knee level, knocking the cumbersome human onto his back as he delivered a straight punch to the knee of the Salarian to his left. The Salarian went to one knee, but the fast mind of the species meant that it was already countering, bringing down the SMG in a downward blow aimed at Thane’s face. Thane used the slick mud to spin and slip around the blow, kicking away the human’s assault rifle in the process.

Coming back round to face his opponent, Thane swatted away his attempt to bring up his SMG and brought his own pistol up and pressed it under the jawline. A split second of shock and fear flashed across the Salarian’s face as Thane pulled the trigger and his body jerked, going rigid as the sudden brain trauma sent random surges through every nerve in his body.

At the same moment a pair of large, armoured arms closed around Thane’s chest from behind. The human had grabbed him a clumsy bear hug and was pulling him to his feet while the injured Turian staggered closer. Thane kicked hard with both feet against the wall, pushing both himself and the human backwards and out of balance. The impact against the opposite wall was hard and stunned the human long enough for Thane to slip from his grip. By then the Turian was on them. Thane absorbed a brutal swing with an elbow block before he struck back with a thrusting open palm to the face, more of a push than an impact, which sent the Turian staggering backwards a step.

Thane thrust his elbow back into the ribs of the human behind him before spinning to face him, placed a hand on the heavily armoured helmet and slammed his head against the wall, stunning him again. In the same motion he spun back to the Turian, who again was coming forward, slipped under a weak swipe of his talons, grabbed the handle of his Umbranemus knife and wrenched it up and out. The blade had served to plug the wound when he had thrown it into the Turian’s neck, but pulling the serrated blade free had done the real damage, tearing and opening a bloody fissure in his neck. Thane only heard a drowned gargle as he spun back to the human and punched the blade under the armpit, between the armoured plates and into his lung before he brought up his pistol and ended it quickly.

The whole confrontation had lasted seconds, perhaps ten at most. He could hear Grunt roaring his battlecry somewhere ahead and took off running again, leaving the Turian to slowly sink to his knees, clutching the wound that was pouring the final moments of his life into the mud.

* * *

“Tali!?” Shepard shouted over the gunfire as rounds thumped against the low wall that she pressed against. Round were snapping against the concrete all around her, showering her in debris. Tali was tucked into an alcove at the base of the Anti-Aircraft tower, furiously working away with her omni-tool.

“I’m going as fast as I can.” She called back.

“Faster would be better!” Shepard replied as she popped up from cover and returned fire. They had reached the AA gun tower seconds before the mercenaries and taken cover around it to give Tali time to sabotage the systems. There were only a few enemies at the moment, the main force was obviously too busy with Grunt and Thane, but they were well armed, armoured and shielded. Shepard’s shields could only take a few seconds of sustained fire before she had to duck back behind cover and recharge.

“Shepard.” Thane’s voice came over her comm unit.

“Thane,” Shepard replied, “What’s your status?”

“They have deployed heavy mechs and well-equipped units. We cannot hold much longer.”

“Understood.” She said before turning back to Tali “Tali!”

“It’s done!” She shouted back, “AA batteries off line.”

“About fuckin’ time!!” Jack shouted over the gunfire.

“Joker,” Shepard said. “Guns are down, bring the thunder!”

“Roger that, Commander.” Joker responded, “Two minutes out.”

“Thane? Grunt?” Shepard called down her comm.

“Yeah!” Grunt’s voice was almost drowned out by gunfire from both ends. “We’re still here!”

“Get your asses out of there, storm hits in one minute! Don’t you dare die before I get there!”

“I’ll be alive.” Grunt responded, before she heard two more blasts of his shotgun. “Can’t vouch for these fuckers, though.”

Shepard turned back to Jack, Tali and Saren, all hunkered behind the wall to her right.

“We need to get to the courtyard, push forward!” She said before vaulting the cover.

* * *

The air smelled of battle and blood. Grunt’s once pristine armour was chipped and scorched in half a hundred places from where rounds and shrapnel had made it past his shields and the armoured plating over his head had a few marks to match. His armour, his arms, his face, they were all spattered in his enemy’s blood. The feel of it wet and warm against his skin and the smell of it in his nostrils was boiling his blood. He was fighting against every fibre of his being not to charge forward, to get close enough to his enemies to taste the blood in the air. But an air-strike was coming in seconds, and he had to stay back. Instead, he turned back behind the corner of the building he was stood beside as another barrage of gunfire came in. He ejected the spent thermal clip from his shotgun and found the magazine empty.

“Running low!” He shouted as he swapped the empty shotgun for the collector rifle. Thane had found him a few moments earlier, and together they were falling back, away from the barracks. Grunt stepped back out from cover and started returning fire. The mercenaries had obviously figured out that Thane and Grunt were together and were all converging on their position. They had also fielded their better equipped men along with the heavy mechs. The exchange had quickly turned the area around Grunt and Thane into a flaming ruin. The hastily built cluster of mock up buildings around them had been completely destroyed by gunfire and grenades and a dozen fires were now burning around them. Grunt saw the lumbering form of a heavy mech lurching through the ruins behind the mercenary line. Their half-demolished cover wouldn’t be able to protect them from the heavy weaponry on the walking tank if it got a clear line of fire.

“MOVE!!” Grunt roared as he unleashed a full clip full auto towards the mercenary positions. He kept his aim low, aiming more for the cover than the mercenaries themselves. He wasn’t trying to kill them so much as just get them to keep their heads down behind their covers, and the sound of rounds cracking off walls and shattering concrete around them would be much more panicking than simply whizzing over their heads. Thane used the moment to slip from his cover and bolt past Grunt, further away from the barracks. Grunt emptied the last of his clip at the heavy mech and followed Thane just as the mech fired the first rounds from the twin mass accelerator cannons on its right arm.

* * *

Shit, Grunt thought as he followed Thane down a short alleyway between the last two buildings. they had reached the end of the buildings, the training yard before them was fifty yards of empty killzone. Even with their top-of-the-line shields and Grunt’s heavy armour, the mercenaries would tear them to shreds in seconds. As they approached the end of the short alley, a single human whipped around the corner with his shotgun levelled straight at Thane’s head. Grunt flinched, expecting to see Thane’s body lurch and drop into the mud, but was instead sent stumbling into the wall as he felt the blast hit his own shields and armour instead. Thane had somehow managed to escape the blast in the impossibly short time between seeing the merc and the shot. Grunt’s superior shields and armour had saved his life for the hundredth time that day, Thane would not have been so lucky in a leather jacket.

He recovered his footing and looked up to see Thane standing over the human soldier lying crumpled and face down in the mud. He didn’t have time to figure out exactly how the Drell assassin had killed the man, or how he had done it so quickly, he followed the Drell to a lone shipping container on the edge of the buildings, the last piece of cover before the open courtyard, and took cover behind it. It was only moments later that the mercenaries took their new positions and were peppering the side of the container with fresh rounds.

“Grunt!” Shepard’s voice came through over the comm unit. “We see you. We’re on the south-east corner of the courtyard. Grunt looked over to the far side of the yard and saw the team in cover by the far buildings.

“We’ve got you covered, get your ass out of there, twenty seconds!”

“Hold on.” Grunt said as he clipped his shotgun back onto the holding locks on his back. He turned around, grabbed the metal door of the container with both hands and pulled with all his strength. There was a moment of groaning metal before the hinges gave way under the pressure and the door came free. He heaved the huge slab onto his shoulder and turned to Thane.

“You ready?” He asked, receiving only a resilient nod in reply.

“Go!” He shouted and started for the far corner as he heard Shepard yell “Covering fire!”

Grunt ran as fast as he could under the weight of the door. As slow as it made him, the shield was invaluable, rounds drummed against the metal constantly, sending vibrations straight through into Grunt’s muscles that made it seem even heavier. Thane kept pace at a light jog.

They had only made it about a third of the distance when he faintly heard Shepard screaming something indistinguishable over the storm of gunfire and the drumming of rounds right beside his head. The next instant, a blazing trail of heat screamed passed so close to him that he felt the heat of it against his face. The rocket impacted a few yards ahead of him, directly next to Thane. He saw Thane’s shields absorb the shrapnel as he was thrown sideways through the air, landing heavily in the mud. Another rocket detonated against the metal door he was holding a second later, punching the heavy slab into his chest with vicious force. Grunt was blown sideways and forced to his knees by the impact. His ears were ringing and his head was spinning. He could faintly hear the commander’s voice.

“INCOMING!”

Shepard’s voice echoed in his own head as he dragged the now buckled door towards Thane, who was now on his knees in the mud, obviously dazed by the explosion. As he reached him, he could hear the rising rumble of the Normandy approaching that most would mistake for thunder. He planted the door as firmly as he could into the mud, facing it directly towards the barracks and braced his shoulder against it. With his free hand he grabbed Thane by the collar and pulled him in behind his makeshift cover as he heard the rumble rise into an almighty crack as the Normandy flew overhead. He gritted his teeth and braced for the shockwave.

* * *

“COVER!” Shepard shouted as the Normandy passed overhead. She saw the flash of the mass effect cannons firing and tucked as far behind the corner as she could without losing sight of Grunt and Thane.

The blast was catastrophic. The shell punched through the roof of the barracks and the explosion reduced the entire building to a deadly wave of debris. Every part of the building seemed to shatter in the same instant, propelled outwards by the force of the blast. The shockwave was no less devastating to the array of mock buildings in front of the structure that Thane and Grunt had been battling amongst only moments earlier. The hastily and poorly built mock ups were blown apart like houses of cards. The screams of the mercenaries were cut off a microsecond after they started as the shrapnel and debris pulverised them in a heartbeat. The wave of destruction swallowed Thane and Grunt a half second after the impact. Shepard had to dive back from the corner as the blast reached the far end of the courtyard, a wall of gray death, followed by a searing heat that made her shield her face with her hand before it vanished as suddenly as it had hit.

After the initial blast, the morning went eerily silent. Before her stood a wall of dust thicker than smoke that sat like a blue-grey cloud in the first light of dawn. The only sound was her own breathing as she got back to her feet. Checking around her, she could see Tali, Jack and Saren stood behind her, a safe distance away from the blast that had come a bit too close for her own comfort. Jack was still guarding the stoically quiet Saren like a hawk. Shepard used hand signals to get Tali’s attention and signalled to follow her. Raising her rifle, Shepard stepped out into the cloud of dust. The visibility was only a few yards with the thickness of the cloud of concrete that had once been the barracks building. She moved slowly, choosing her footing carefully as she moved over the rubble and debris that littered the whole yard. The ground was completely covered in the shattered remained of concrete blocks, twisted pieces of metal girders and piping and more disturbingly, the occasional piece of armour. Moving forward, she heard a faint, echoing sound of something heavy landing in the wet mud.

“Thane?” Shepard called out cautiously “Grunt.”

As she inched forward into the dust, a sudden breeze swept in from the east, parting the thick, choking cloud enough for her to see the forms of Thane and Grunt emerging from the rubble. They were both covered in dust, caked to them by sweat and blood. Grunt was carrying the twisted remains of the large door they had taken cover behind, which he dropped as they neared her position. Despite their battered appearance, Grunt had a savage grin on his face and couldn’t have looked happier and even Thane looked quietly satisfied with himself as he came face to face with Shepard.

“You look like shit.” Shepard said.

“My apologies, Commander.” Thane said flatly “Our back-up decided to call an airstrike on us.”

The comment caught Shepard off guard and she barked a rather loud laugh at him.

“Did you just sass me, Thane?” Shepard said “You’ve been spending too much time with Jack.”

“Perhaps.” Thane said with a reserved half smile “I doubt there are any survivors, but we should sweep the area.”

“Agreed,” She activated her comm. unit “Outstanding work, Joker. Get on the horn to Hackett and have him send a relief team, emergency medical teams, victim recovery personnel and plenty of food. Then set the Normandy down as close as possible to the container yard, we’ve got a lot of people down here needing help.”

“No problem, Commander. Did you find some answers down there?”

Shepard pull out the databox she had taken from the command centre and stared at it, wondering what she would find on it. She then looked across the courtyard to where Saren was standing amongst the middle of the scattered debris, taking in the sight of such destruction like a tourist walking round an art gallery. Shepard felt the same chill run up her spine despite the warmth of the dawn sun on her back as he finally locked eyes with her, staring her down with the same self-assured, piercing blue eyes that always made her feel exposed, vulnerable. He was still hiding something from her. She knew, from somewhere inside of herself deeper than logic or rationale that there were still things he wasn’t telling them. There were secrets behind those eyes, she could see it plain as daylight.

And cruelty.

“We’ll see.” She replied, not taking her eyes from Saren’s “Soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I loved writing that chapter, I hope to have done this series justice so far. I can't believe I stopped writing at this point, it was just getting going! Please leave a review or comment if you can, it would be much appreciated

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, please leave a review if you can, I would appreciate any constructive criticism. I have nine chapters currently written and will be posting them in a short space of time, hopefully I will have finished the tenth by the time I get there.


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